Struts, The - YOUNG&DANGEROUS Vinyl

The second full-length outing from the bombastic British rockers, Young & Dangerous picks right up where the Struts' 2014 debut, the bawdy, neo-glam pop fest Everybody Wants, left off. No longer just a showcase for charismatic Jagger/Mercury-esque frontman Luke Spiller -- he is still an alveolar trill-seeking force of nature -- the 13-track set plays out like a Mutt Lange production with Mark Ronson at the helm. This is stadium hard rock for the streaming generation, a neon-streaked cornucopia of seismic earworm hooks that yield tectonic plate-shaking choruses, all dressed up in a glitzy Slade meets Imagine Dragons wrapper. It's also a shit-ton of fun, the direct antithesis to the group's retrofitted contemporaries Greta Van Fleet's painfully derivative sophomore effort, Anthem of the Peaceful Army, which arrived just a week prior. Lead singles "Bulletproof Baby," "Primadonna Like Me," and "Body Talks," the latter of which serves as a bookend, with a souped-up, Kesha-assisted electropop version doubling as the closer, are as immediate and infectious as they are brazenly forged in fires that have long been reduced to ash. Self-aware and unrepentant, the Struts succeed where other artists who look to the past often fail, in large part because, like the Darkness before them, they possess both pop smarts and considerable amounts of moxie. They may not be capable of staging a second British Invasion, but they sure would put on a helluva Super Bowl halftime show. ~ James Christopher Monger

• Format: Vinyl