THE MOONEY SUZUKI /// ALIVE AND AMPLIFIED /// RED INK/COLMUBIA ///

I should like the Mooney Suzuki. With the cool name and the rock star poses and the lovingly battered Nuggets influence, I should be dancing across the floor to their mod/psych enthusiasm. And yet, somehow, I never am. Something about their by-the-numbers rock revivalism just washes over me. "Wait'll you hear the new album," friends said. "It'll convert you." I got excited. I wanted to understand. I wanted that potential, heralded since the late-nineties, to be fulfilled. And if it took a major label release and Matrix production to do it... well, so be it, and let's rock.

Which brings us to Alive & Amplified and my feet are still sadly planted on the ground. Where once there was raw, stripped down '60s garage-itude, now there is layered, highly produced, R&B-inflected, seventies psychedelia (think Hair. Then unfold the lyrics sheet into the poster of the three-headed naked black woman, tack it up on your wall, turn on the black lights, and get high). The album's not bad by any means, but it doesn't do the one thing rock is supposed to: gut-punch you on a purely visceral, I-have-to-hear-that-song-non-stop-for-hours level. The title track, with its nonsensical but rousing "Na na na na!" chorus, comes the closest and also avoids the lyrical pitfalls of the head-shakingly lame "Shake That Bush Again!," "Loose 'N' Juicy," and "Naked Lady." Thank god for the soulful "Sometimes Somethin'" and the old, raw Suzuki on the unlisted bonus track to try to balance things out.

Maybe I just don't have an appreciation for '70s rock nostalgia or the hand clappin' potential of these New York rock 'n' rollers. What can I say? We're just different signs, baby; you're all Age of Aquarius and I'm all not a fan.

Megan Gerrity