The IV Thieves

The IV Thieves were formerly known primarily under singer Nic Armstrong's name. Since collaboration yielded to equality, however, they've become co-talented furies of ragged-out, thick-sticked garage rock that sounds like the New York Dolls trashing the musical hotel room of the Sonics. And although softer crackles abound -- "The Sound and the Fury" even has traces of Love and the Zombies -- the Thieves never mix out the scuff: The guitar gets filtered through boot dirt, and the singing, even at its dreamiest, has tube-sock film around the edges. But it's more than the hard swagger of '60s harmonies that make this one of the most serious and solid rock-and-roll acts out there. The group seems to have absorbed some of the best musical sounds of several decades, from the bombastic Camaro grooves of the Flamin' Groovies to what sounds like Kevin Shields's interpretation of a plane taking off on the album's closer, "Chase Me Out/Off," which ends in a gorgeous melody flattening out into stratospheric white noise.