Mystique has always been at the heart of
Urge Overkill, the self-styled rock & roll jetsetters who had a fleeting moment of fame during the height of the 1990s alt-rock boom and then slid into years of inactivity. During their peak, the band's aura emanated from their deliberately outdated fashions, and their allegiance to thick, dirty hard rock made them outliers; they were renegades from the 1970s running wild among the flannel-clad grungesters. During middle age, the mystery of
Nash Kato and
Eddie "King" Roeser is why they take over a decade to complete a new studio album.
Oui is only the second
Urge Overkill album of the 21st century, arriving 11 years after
Rock & Roll Submarine and sounding like it could've been released 11 months after that LP.
Urge Overkill don't concern themselves with musical progression: they minted their louche, sometimes menacing, sometimes funny, hard rock at the dawn of the 1990s, and every album since has been a series of refinements. Retro rock & roll sounds different in the hands of middle-aged rockers than it does when delivered by a group of wiseass punks, so as a whole
Oui feels heavier -- thematically, that is, not musically -- than previous
Urge albums. Set aside the opening cover of
Wham!'s "Freedom" -- a move that seems designed to generate curious clicks -- alongside a few signature
Kato japes, such as taking delight in the plight of Amanda Knox on the punchy "A Prisoner's Delight,"
Oui is filled with sinewy, slightly sinister rockers in the vein of
Exit the Dragon. Most of these are from
Roeser, who delivers
Oui's true opening track in "A Necessary Evil," a winding journey into the shadows that finds a brighter companion in
Kato's "How Sweet the Light." Throughout
Oui,
Kato tempers
Roeser's darkness, but the two are of similar minds, finding sustenance within the heavy rock they used to treat as a lark, a shift in attitude that makes for an unexpectedly strong, serious record. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine