Rock 'n' Roll Rorschach

Lantern’s 2012 Dream Mine was a crusty, filthy, lo-fi mess sounding like Iggy gone over the edge, and 2012’s Burned Youth (a collection of older material) was a curious, lysergic trip through a big, dirty garage. On Rock’n’Roll Rorschach, the Philly band seem to be continuing the quest for self-identity—like those blobs of Rorschach ink, the tunes here ooze and ripple and spill out in a variety of shapes and configurations. But there's a cohesiveness to this collection. It unabashedly features guitar solos over chugging beds of bass and drums; it rages and spews with a feral, ‘60s punk fury. It should light a fire under the most indifferent couch hugger. Hints of T-Rex glam on the title track, more Stooges worship on “Where Are We Now?," and a neck-wrenching evocation of MC5 on “Out of Our Heads” give Rock’n’Roll Rorschach a mega-dose of stinky black-leather-and-sweat cred. “Evil Eye” is genius, ripping it open with bleating horns and thorny streams of guitar notes atop a floor-stomping bed of drums and handclaps; those horns add a delirious bit of crazy to other tracks, too, like the late-‘70s New York screamer “Heart in Your Tongue.”