The Sights: The Sights

The retro-rockers in The Sights came up through Detroit's neo-garage scene, but always had more in common with the heavy, thunderous sound of The Who and Led Zeppelin. Or at least they used to. The Sights' eponymous third album loosens the band's starting requirements, slipping in a little country-rock, a little heavy metal, and a little R&B, in songs that sometimes pick a sound and grind it raw—like the acid-splashed, roller-rink-ready "Circus" and the Ted Nugent-styled stormer "Last Chance"—and sometimes roam off the path, as if distracted by something shiny. The best example of the latter is the jaunty "Backseat," which initially sounds no different than the post-Kinks U.S. garage rock that inspired it, until the halfway point, when the band slips into a brief psychedelic jam and comes out on the other side with an entirely new song, a show-stopping movie-musical number packed with howling accusations.

The Sights officially ends with "Good Way To Die," a haymaker anthem that balls up The Beatles, MC5, and Bad Company, but the record really ends with a hidden cover of Faces' "Stay With Me" that would be openly derivative if lead vocalist Eddie Baranek weren't yelping like Tim Curry in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. A lot of The Sights' songs sound most impressive in pieces. The salsa-fied organ break in the middle of "Suited Fine," the long, twangy guitar solo that closes "Waiting On A Friend," and the stinging guitar solo that wraps "Just Got Robbed" all justify any and all of the conventional rock footprints that The Sights followed to get to them.