At first listen, Gram Rabbit’s new LP sounds veritably commercial in comparison to their last two albums, which bet their futures on weird psychedelic quasi-electro. In particular, their 2006 Cultivation album was strangely captivating – no, I’ll just say it, great – on the strength of Jessika von Rabbit’s sexy but unattainable teasing, that is up until the point that Todd Rutherford’s semi-Spacemen 3 vocals mussed up the hair of “Angel Song.”

It’s there that one’s skip-button finger got itchy, and the next couple of tunes inspired a lot of ejection-button hits. With this self-indulgence having gone by the books over a 3-album span, the band has earned a respite from smashing their heads against the wall, and they’ve spent their elite-underground-artiste capital (Scarlett Johansson says GR is her favorite band, but then she sort of says that about everybody) doing an entire album’s worth of crunch-guitar-ridden post-acid-house and Fatboy Slim-inspired big beat, Jessika’s bee-stung pout pimped front and center.

Only obstacle to these guys’ taking over the world is their budget, which isn’t the size of Chemical Brothers’, and their depth, which is a bit advanced for average listeners – it requires an entire two listens to get you hooked.

By Eric Saeger

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