They sounded like Kiss in MC5 camouflage, tore through college radio in the fall of 1999, and put out the first album I and probably a bunch of other dudes bought that featured the (somewhat peripheral) guitar and songwriting contributions of one Jack White. The Go's Whatcha Doin' was brutally simple, kinda dumb and fairly inexplicable: how could an album be so guiltlessly enjoyable when it sounded like a caricature of everything goofy about boozy muttonchop-rock, an uncanny simulation of a circa-'66 Nuggets garage band schlepping through the malaise era in a Boris Vallejo-airbrushed, waterbed-equipped Econoline van? The question only became more pervasive when their self-titled second album-- released four years later, after they split with Sub Pop and the long-departed Jack was on White Stripes album #4-- made their previously-reliable formula sound a bit lifeless. Considering the label-scotched fate of their unreleased intended sophomore release Free Electricity, which has gained a small but mythic following as a lost classic of sorts, they could've just lost momentum.
If that's the case, then Howl on the Haunted Beat You Ride is where the Go gain it back. And how they do it is an interesting surprise: Instead of going back to the well of lead-footed, high-powered scuzz-rock that gave them their original swagger, they've retrofitted themselves as a versatile psych-pop outfit that reveals their once-covert tendencies towards romanticism and harmonizing. As great as Whatcha Doin' was, both it and The Go were relatively one-note riff-crunch deals, while Haunted Beat runs through a good span of ideas that, albeit gently-used secondhand (get ready to be sporadically reminded of the Apple Records catalog circa 1971), all come across as the work of a band that's smarter than it's let on.
It does take some chutzpah to start off an album with a song that sounds not unlike solo Ringo Starr, but "You Go Bangin' On" is a likeably arch piece of work-- all cane-twirling piano and loose-jointed, stoop-shouldered rhythms and a vocal from frontman Bobby Harlow that injects his gut-deep voice with a casual chortle. Harlow's voice has evolved from his earlier two-mode setting (buttery proto-Casablancas murmur and venomous aw-yeah snarl) into a rogue's gallery of style: teen bubblegum heartthrob on "Invisible Friends"; Kinks-ian pastoral crooner on "Mercurial Girl"; doo-wop Anglophile on "Caroline". And the other vocalists (which, at various points, include the other three core members of the band) follow suit with a flourish; the way "Mary Ann" shifts from the plaintive greaser lead vocal on the verses to a flat but close harmony on the chorus is a nifty trick. Those harmonies benefit from the tight, fluid instrumentation that back them, especially the rhythm section of bassist John Krautner and drummer Marc Fellis: They make malleable funk out of "Yer Stoned Italian Cowboy" and roll out a rhythm on "So Long Johnny" that smoothly snaps from a jaw-clenching march reminiscent of the Doors' "Five to One" to a beat that captures the yearning intensity of turn-of-the-60s r&b. The guitar of James McConnell, meanwhile, is subtle when it needs to be, and imposing when he lashes out-- tense and hornetlike on "Down a Spiral", cranking out keening Buck Dharma-isms on closer "Smile".
If there are faults to Haunted Beat, they lie mostly in the fact that a band as historically minded as the Go occasionally struggles to find their own identity, and even with the versatility on display, it'll probably take a few listens before it sounds evocative of itself instead of a collection of vaugely-remembered 60s and 70s pop relics. It doesn't help that lyrics are often rote exercises, albeit endearingly-sung ones; clichés are clichés because they work, but there are few real surprises in the songwriting department. The half-poetic doggerel on "Refrain" is a bit egregious ("Every shadow has a name/ When I think of mine, I moan/ I hear rumors of such fame/ not for pride, but only shame"), but most of the album coasts well enough on simple hooks-- "why don't'cha tell me what you're lookin' for/ maybe I can help you out"; "down a spiral reelin', yeah/ [backmasked gibberish]"; a couple instances of resonant "la la la"s-- that let most of the profundity come through in the delivery. It's more Sunday afternoon than Friday night, and if you're looking for the big stoopid thrill that made Whatcha Doin' a condensed dose of raw power, you might be disappointed, but as gradual reinventions go this one's a long-awaited reward.
