After achieving success with the blues-rock sound of their eponymous debut and their sophomore effort 500 Pounds, Canadian band Big Sugar decided it was time for a change. Like the early Rolling Stones, they were no longer content to merely cover the songs of heroes and influences like Al Green and Muddy Waters and worked hard to develop their own songwriting abilities. Heated, their fourth full-length album, is the end-product of that labor, with eleven of the twelve tracks being originals. But rather than keep things stripped-down and simple, the band chose to explore some electronic possibilities for their music, employing greater use of synthesizers and dabbling in samples and sound effects. Though light-years away from the mechanical collages of artists like Underworld or nine inch nails, Big Sugar’s new material nevertheless has a distinctly contemporary dimension to it. The question is: does it work?

I’ve noticed that my reviews of late have been quite lengthy - or as my wife might put it, “as bloated as a dead fish that’s been lying on the riverbank under the hot sun for five days” - so I’ll try to keep this short and sweet. With some rastaman talk at the beginning (“Big Sugar come wit da musical vibration and maximum version!”), “Where I Stand” demonstrates reggae’s growing influence on Big Sugar’s sound and gives us a taste of their digital experimentation. Frontman Gordie Johnson plays some techno-fuzz guitar atop a keyboard that hums and bubbles like styrofoam melting in a frying pan as he demands understanding and acceptance. The result? Surprisingly pedestrian. Coming in at just under six minutes, it feels like a jam session number that was spliced together from numerous takes and polished up afterwards; at one point the song crashes to a halt and starts anew, as if the band couldn’t come up with a proper bridge and decided to just skip it. Not a very promising start.

More reggae beats and some stinging guitar solos are injected into a cover of Bachman-Turner Overdrive’s “Let It Ride” that is, for all its rolling thunder sound, ultimately forgettable. “Cop A Plea” and “Round And Round (For CJ)” won’t be remembered as anything special, though their catchy hooks and melodies aren’t bad. With its sparse and lonely atmosphere, “Kickin’ Stones” effectively conjures up ghost town imagery as well as something else: narcolepsy. The first time I listened to it, I fell asleep halfway through. I had eaten a large meal beforehand, true, but this tune still doesn’t generate much excitement.

The main problem with Heated is that a good number of the songs are not as emotionally effective as they could be. Perhaps it was simply due to the live-off-the-floor way they were captured, but past faves such as “Ride Like Hell” and “Standing Around Crying” had a rawness and an immediacy that were electrifying, with Johnson in particular playing his axe as if the fate of the world depended on it. At their best, Big Sugar could make you stop the car in the middle of a busy intersection and keep you glued to the seat, your ears sucking up every heart-rending note erupting from the speakers while your jaw falls onto the floor mat. Here, the tunes create a peculiar sense of distance between the listener and the band and don’t always fully connect, like a waiter trying to interact as little as possible with his customers and still collect a fifteen percent tip. Don’t get me wrong - the members of Big Sugar haven’t lost their technical proficiency or grown lazy in their performance. It’s just that everything feels a bit off, and the album’s decidedly over-produced tone is most likely to blame. The echo effects, vocal overdubs, and other manipulations come off as gimmicky and give many songs a slightly desperate edge, as if studio trickery was necessary to try and mask shortcomings of composition and recording.

This is still Big Sugar, though, which means that at least one full scoop of their stuff will prove worthy of your time and money. “Better Get Used To It” tells of a scoundrel whose desire for Ms. Right inspires a renouncement of his sinful ways and a fierce campaign to win her love. Though brief, it has a funky R&B vibe straight out of the seventies that’ll put a strut in your step as you visit the corner flower stand to buy roses for your own lady. Reminiscent of other good-natured, narcissistic classics like Otis Redding’s “Hard To Handle,” “The Scene” is a swaggering, fast-paced rocker about a guy that knows he’s the bomb and isn’t shy about telling you, and comes complete with audience cheers and applause. “Diggin’ A Hole” has that old affliction called heartache as its theme, combining minimal lyrics, distorted vocals, and some harmonica flourishes by Kelly Hoppe into the closest thing to a pop song the band has ever recorded. “Can’t read the lines on a page,” Johnson complains, “I’m feeling twice my age/I’ve been crying for days and I’m falling apart.” This actually first appeared on the band’s 1996 album Hemi-Vision and achieved moderate success in Canada when it was released as a single. (The song “Leadbelly” is substituted on the Canadian issue of Heated.) The closer “Heart Refuse to Pound (For Alex)” is a stirring examination of love and death with a throbbing bassline from Garry Lowe and some beautifully plaintive guitar work from Johnson. “If I thought you felt the same, I would walk until I was lame/Cross four thousand miles, just to hold you for awhile/How long till I have you?” Not quite in the same league as their extraordinary rendition of “Wild Ox Moan” but damn good nonetheless.

Scoping out hot babes is the order of business on the lusty “Girl Watcher,” whose beefy, Aerosmith-type guitar riffs make dopey lines like “She looks fine, at least from behind” easier to overlook. Johnson adopts a country twang and a conversational tone as the Philip Morris company’s wet dream, a guy that’s going to smoke a couple of cartons while he waits for his gal to come back in the quirky “100 Cigarettes.” “Turn The Lights On” has a jaunty, bouncy rhythm to bob your head to but compared to the better tracks here, it’s as insubstantial as cotton candy.

A nameless, unlisted reggae-flavored instrumental is also included though it only reinforces the scattershot, unfocused quality of the album. For hardcore fans only.

I see that this review is still bulging at the margins despite my attempts to keep it concise. Ah, well. There’s a lot to say, good and bad, about Heated. The stylistic hat Big Sugar tried on may have proven an ill fit but you have to admit one thing: the photo of Gordie Johnson’s 1970 Dodge Charger makes for a great cover. Let’s hope their next release measures up to the packaging on this one.

Recommended: Yes

Great Music to Play While: Hanging With Friends