Fans of Ben Acker and Ben Blacker’s podcast, “Thrilling Adventure Hour,” and its accompanying stage show, will find themselves right at home on Long Lost, the new concept album by Lord Huron that will have listeners doing the time warp.

Like “TAH,” Long Lost throws listeners into a 1940s or ’50s variety television “program.” Where the former was more cosmopolitan with odes to sleek cigarettes and suits, the album is plastered onto the background of Nashville-adjacent middle America. Yet, the 13 songs on this equally thrilling hour of music aren’t out of the realm of music on which Lord Huron has been circling since 2012’s Lonesome Dreams, 2015’s Strange Trails and 2018’s Vide Noir: dreamy folk that creates a mood as much as it tells stories that pulls on your heartstrings.

Ahead of the album release, Lord Huron spent months building a mythology for it: Introducing one “Mr. Tubbs Tarbell,” a fictional resident of a countryfied version of the band’s Whispering Pines studio (and possibly a ranch) and witness to the band’s creation of songs that seem both familiar and new. In this version of the story, Tarbell credits himself as the writer of the album’s only fully uptempo song, single “Not Dead Yet.” The jangly tune, which blends acoustic and electric guitars and a four-on-the-floor snare-led beat, falls two-thirds of the way into the web of some other dimension. It’s the album’s only moment of jubilant release, while much of the rest has the effect of making you tense up, wanting to know where Lord Huron’s story will take you.

There’s also the variety show itself, which structures the album into neat segments: an introduction, breaks, conclusion and the clapping of a studio TV show audience. Tarbell appears to be the host of this show. The mysterious quality seems pulled directly from “Twin Peaks.”

The first 30 seconds of album opener “The Moon Doesn’t Mind” blends out of 14-minute closing tune “Time’s Blur.” When you’re listening to the album on repeat, it will create a trippy effect of force-pushing and -pulling you out of the warped new dimension of the record. These musical segments—wordless, phase-shifted synths, absent of any real structure—could go into “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” without a second thought. These blurs of time are the travel into the rest of the record.

Right at the 30-second mark of the album opener, the bass does a trippy drop and jangly acoustic strumming replace it just in time for the lonesome outro of Ben Schneider: “The sky doesn’t care what my poor heart wants/ And the desert can’t hear my cries/ The moon doesn’t mind that I’m left all alone/ And she’s gone, gone, gone.”

The rest of the album is a combination of countryfied folk, with several other elements thrown in to keep it interesting. “Mine Forever,” the first complete track on Long Lost, throws in some late ’60s psychedelia, recalling The Doors, Scott McKenzie’s “San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)” and “Austin Powers.” There’s a whispered outro—in French, no less.

“Love Me Like You Used To” is one of several Spaghetti Western nods on the record, backed up choral singing, and… is that a musical saw? Nope! But it’s a chamber orchestra of violins, violas, cellos, a trumpet and a flute—17 backing musicians and five singers in all—that help to create the effortless cool of the entire album.

Schneider bandmates (drummer Mark Barry, bassist Miguel Briseño—also playing theremin—and guitarist Tom Renaud) are consummate pros, creating structure and melody but otherwise letting the orchestra and backing singers shine on this record.

The noir-like “Meet Me in the City” slinks along on simple, jazzy percussion, strings, tremelo-laden guitar and echoey vocals, bisected by a psychedelic piano or electric guitar line. The 95-second “At Sea” offers South Pacific vibes thanks to the lap steel guitar playing of Greg Leisz. “I Lied,” a wistful waltz, features a duet with Allison Ponthier, who may be playing the role of the thematic long lost love of the record.

“I read your letter in the morning by the lake and I cried/ They were tears of joy, my chains are finally broken/ I made a vow to stand beside you ‘til the day that I die/ Told you I could never live without your love but I lied,” Ponthier sings. It’s, perhaps, the only direct reply to Schneider’s longing.

The title track, which comes just before the halfway point on Long Lost, is a cross between Roy Orbison’s soulful Brill Building pop with Lyle Lovett’s twangy country. The swelling of the strings is truly from another time. Listeners of a certain age will find themselves right at home. But existing Lord Huron fans will find a throughline from its previous music, including mega-hit “The Night We Met.”

These songs are broken up between bits of variety show dialogue; a host introducing a musical performer on “(One Helluva Performer),” a bar singalong at the end of “Twenty Long Years,” a snippet from some possibly fake film “(Deep Down Inside Ya)” and others.

There will be fans digging deep to discover the big plot of the record, just as fans of “Lost” had to get to the bottom of the island’s mysteries. There’s a lot of lonesomeness and searching for a treasured talisman—or woman—going on. Even Schneider and his bandmates seem to go searching for answers on penultimate track “What Do It Mean,” at least until the TV show host orders the curtains lowered on this performance; “It’s been delightful! So long, good luck, goodbye!”

But if you go into the album without any prior knowledge of what Lord Huron has embarked upon, it still holds up musically. Don’t be scared off.

Follow editor Roman Gokhman at Twitter.com/RomiTheWriter.