COURTESY HELLIN KAY / CAPITOL RECORDS
Chantal Claret is comfortable in her sexuality as lead singer for Morningwood.
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Good Morning
Morningwood is unassuming, unabashed and totally unashamed
GOT MORNINGWOOD?
If you haven't, it's worth your time to rock out with this New York-based buzz band, fronted by the attitudinal 23-year-old Chantal Claret and her "bestest friend," bass player Pedro Yanowitz.
The band's eponymous debut on Capitol Records at times evokes that same blissful, wakening feeling that the group's name denotes -- and as this review is going through my editor's careful perusal, I'm going to stop while I'm ahead.
But in its online bio, Morningwood does describe itself as "a monster truck having sex with a Bond girl." And if you can wrap your ears around that loaded metaphor, you can pick up a restless pulse of barely reined-in horniness that runs through most of the album's songs.
Working in London with high-profile veteran producer Gil Norton (Pixies and Foo Fighters, to name just two previous clients), the resulting collection maintains its lust-hungry groove, bumped up by a couple of hale-and-hearty highlights.
The album kicks off with "Nü Rock," calling out that "little pretty with the tattooed skin," Claret singing that "you sure got the style / but you ain't got the soul." Morningwood's lead-off single, "Nth Degree," is a sparkly introductory cheer, your kind of song "if you're a rock and roll, disco, heavy metal angel."
COURTESY HELLIN KAY / CAPITOL RECORDS
The band: Pedro Yanowitz, left, Chantal Claret, Richard Steel and Japa Keenon.
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And if you didn't catch on to the accumulation of come-ons, there's "Take Off Your Clothes." It's the let's-forget-foreplay song, as Claret breathlessly expresses in the song's bridge, "I wanna touch your little / your little hip bones / your collar bones / and all your other bones / and your happy trail / your treasure trail / let's see what goes down." The rest is left to your overheated imagination.
Two of the album's better songs come back to back. Claret tries to put her youthful ways behind her in "Body 21," as she tires of the groping in favor of an open-hearted relationship. That's followed by the balls-to-the-wall "Easy," a group-written effort that includes guitarist Richard Steel and drummer Japa Keenon.
The 1980s get a bit of a nod with the naughty Devo-ish ditty "Babysitter" and "New York Girls," a celebration of all those hot, young things in a Day-Glo, new-wave setting.
But all things must end, and "Ride the Lights" is the after-party tune, where the underbelly of glam life shows off its synthetic ugliness. Don't worry, though, if you keep young at heart -- like the kids on the album's hidden track singing the chorus of "Everybody Rules" -- you always get a second chance at life.