Colour Revolt

One gets the impression that Oxford, Mississippi's Colour Revolt really dug the self-serious, portent-heavy alt-rock of the '90s. Plunder, Beg, and Curse, the quintet's new album, belabors doomy bombast, artsy dynamics and high-school-binder lyricism that would embarrass its author in any other context, even if said binder were plastered with fading Radiohead, Tool and Soundgarden stickers. What's insidious about these dudes is that their throwback affectations work. The studied moans of singers and guitarists Jesse Coppenbarger and Sean Kirkpatrick become palatable in proportion with the slow-motion crystalization of the melodies they're flogging like ragged throughbreds.