Those Peabodys

Those Peabodys

Those Peabodys rock; to be sure, they also tend to forget the purpose behind all those feats of string-bending dexterity. Unite Tonight, the local quartet's second full-length and first for NYC indie Tiger Style, is less an album than a scattershot collection of riffs and poses that only occasionally cohere into something resembling actual songs. Like any number of aberrant music writers, Unite could've used a good editor; six of its 10 tracks clock in north of four and a half minutes. Inspired by Seventies hair-flippers from Cheap Trick to Deep Purple, the Peabodys crank out enough muscle-car rawk to launch a thousand devil-horn salutes. Unfortunately, they didn't pick up on the part where said guitar-flaying beasts compressed and contained their cocksure struttery into easily digestible portions. Instead, the songs either meander from one lick to another seemingly at random ("Denim and Diamonds Forever"), or else they don't go much of anywhere at all ("Makin' Magic"). Exceptions are the lithe "Komputer Musik," Sabbathesque "Bustin' Up Your Complex," and a full-throttle cover of Phil Spector's "River Deep, Mountain High" that stocks enough metallic cheek to get away with it. Those Peabodys appear both enthralled with and embarrassed by the ghosts of cock-rock past, and their equivocation leads to an album both tight as a whip and unfocused as your average garden salad.