Boston's sludgiest rock two-piece has celebrated its recent relocation to Philly with a series of re-recordings, lifting some of the finest songs from its past three CDs and reworking them in sonically gussied-up versions that occasionally - horror of horrors! - can even be called pretty. Shocking stuff from songwriter Pat McHugh, whose ear for a pretty melody like that of "Meteor Shower" is appreciated less often than his knack for making his guitar sound like it's being amped through speakers filled with rich, loamy mud. The newly beefed-up versions always chug along with a delightfully glammy crunch, and even a decidedly sinister tune like "Whispering Blues" comes off feeling like something you could take home to Mom and give her only the mildest case of the creeps. There's still plenty of bluesy snarl in McHugh's sweetened and often double-tracked vocals - "Lost at Sea" kicks your ass across the room - but the hit of the set is the amazing "The Time Is Out," which sounds like what Marc Bolan would have written if he'd had the chance to be inspired by Get Behind Me Satan. Essential listening, and for the late-night partying crowd, the jam of the summer.
-Steven Hanna