Even when Ballard feigns a move into new wave -- "Bad Boy" opens up with some angelicized reggae, "On the Rebound" has a bit of disco borrowed from Queen -- this winds up firmly in Loverboy territory: all crunching guitars and over-defined rhythms.

Ballard is so dedicated to this sound he even turns Larry Williams' "She Said Yeah" -- a callback to Russ' garage-rocking '60s -- into a plodding big-beat rocker and this single-minded dedication either charms or repels: it's commercial hard rock that lacked a hit, so it captures the sound of its time perhaps better than hits that transcended its year, but its lack of grace is still apparent all these years later.