Medicine
Photo: Astralwerks

Brad Laner definitely believes in fate. How else could he explain working with Bruce Lee heir Brandon Lee on "The Crow" and then ending up in a band with the late actor's sister, Shannon, almost a decade later?

"If you welcome chance into your life, it can yield great results," said Laner, who recently resurrected his '90s alt-rock band Medicine. "It's a magic that you seek out, and I definitely look for random connections like that."

Medicine's new The Mechanical Forces of Love sheds the My Bloody Valentine-inspired, heavily distorted guitar sound of the band's first three albums for a more funk-inspired mix of electronica and dark pop. It often sounds like a mash-up of Garbage and Portishead over a Timbaland beat.

At the center of the album is the bewitching Lee, a sometime actress, classically trained singer, screenwriter and student of martial arts who hooked up with Laner in the unlikeliest way.

"[Former Sex Pistols manager] Malcolm McLaren was looking for somebody with singing chops to join this Asian Spice Girls group he was putting together," said Lee, 34, noting that the other girls were simply models who could carry a tune. Lee eventually bailed on the project, but she got a demo deal out of it that paired her with a number of producers, including Laner.

The two hit it off, but nothing happened until a few years later when Lee invited Laner to a party around the time he was thinking of resurrecting Medicine, who'd broken up in 1995 following the release of their third album, Her Highness. Laner had spent the intervening years giving himself a crash course in home recording technology and sampling.

He also released experimental electronic albums under the name Electric Company, two solo albums as Amnesia (with 1998's Lingus featuring Beck on harmonica) and recorded a Grammy-nominated album with former members of Tool as Lusk.

Shannon, meanwhile, had starred in the 1998 Hong Kong action film "Enter the Eagles," studied her father's Jeet Kun Do style of kung fu and made a TV pilot before deciding to give the pop-singer thing another try.

When the pair finally got together to record, Lee's pregnancy and the recent death of Laner's father inspired the themes of sex and death that inform songs like the glitchy electronic gospel track "Best Future." Over funky beats and a wash of keyboard noise, Lee sings the doom-laden lines "You know you die alone/ Never need to atone/ For a life you hate, although/ You'll never seem to have another time for one" in her sensual yet angelic voice.

The song is typical of the new Medicine, following Laner's goal of ignoring conventional pop song structure, choosing instead to dip, twist and turn in unexpected tempos and directions while still retaining a body-moving groove.

"Negative Capability" sounds like five songs edited into one as it seesaws back and forth between overdriven guitar solos, Beach Boys-like harmonies, blippy computer noises and alternately druggy and speedy choruses.

"Brad has a knack for taking things and chopping them up and putting them together in interesting ways," Lee said, adding that, despite her vocal degree from Tulane University, she encouraged Laner to mutate and stretch her vocals until they sound like unrecognizable instruments. "A lot of our songs start out one way and then go a totally different direction."

The misdirection isn't just lyrical. On the shifty, Middle Eastern-inspired electro-funk song "Wet on Wet," Lee and Laner's voices are all sugary and sweet as they sing the stinging lines "You'll taste my poison/ If you should try to f--- me." The music underneath is such ear candy you might not catch the sinister lyric.

"It's menacing because of what the lyrics are saying," Lee said, "but we wanted it to sound kind of cutesy pop so you would have to do a double take."

The song was inspired by Laner's fight with a British band that attempted to hijack the Medicine name during his band's hiatus, an act Laner didn't take kindly to. "It's like a protection talisman," Laner, 36, said. "Saying, 'Don't tread on me.' "

While Laner can't seem to shake his reputation for distortion, he thinks the new Medicine has plenty of pop punch to balance out the white noise. "That distortion thing follows me around," he said with a laugh. "I tend to think there's something on this album to offend everyone, and I like that. I look at it like I'm building a house and adding weird rooms on just for the hell of it."

• Medicine