*** Plan 9

PLEASURE FARM

(J-Bird Records)

On their first album in years, Rhode Island's redoubtable Plan 9 remain unreconstructed garage-rockers. As on their mid-'80s underground classic Dealing with the Dead, which was reissued on CD last year, their songs remain driven by leader Eric Stumpo's gristly vocalizing and nasty guitars and the cheesy '60s-period keyboard melodies of Deb Demarco. Here they've augmented their sound with fiddle and steel guitar, which gives tunes like "Pleasure Farm" and "Relief Mop" occasional country and Celtic flavorings.

Pleasure Farm does best when it turns creepy, as on the opening "Blip/Open Wound," where the music stops, slows down, then moves into a higher key, and Stumpo begins intoning like a resurrected Anton Sandor LaVey. He remains a highly charged soloist, too, whose most fiery moments -- take the finale of "Animals Doing Things to Each Other" -- are full of chirping harmonic digs and gnarly string bending. Tired of waiting for the next Lyres album? Here's relief, served up with teeth-gritting authenticity.

-- Ted Drozdowski