Urge Overkill's shtick precedes them. With a swagger owing as much to Dean Martin as to the Rolling Stones' Brian Jones, the Chicago trio are a sartorial glitch in a flannel decade. Now, with the band's fourth and best full-length record, Urge's music – which has always swung as flamboyantly as their oversize medallions – may finally get its due.

Saturation is to grunge what Cheap Trick's In Color was to punk. Urge don't ignore the aggression wafting up from the underground; you can hear it in the snarl of the guitars and the shotgun crack of Blackie Onassis' snare drum. There's even a nod to Big Black on the pitiless, feedback-belching "Stalker."

But when guitarist Nash Kato beckons, "Come around to my way of thinking," on the opening track, "Sister Havana," it's also an invitation to another world, a world where melody and melodrama get their due. When he sings, "Now I sleep alone," on "Bottle of Fur," you don't think Kurt Cobain as much as Gene Pitney. And in songs such as "Back on Me" and "Heaven 90210," Urge ride power-ballad kitsch to glory. A familiar arsenal of '70s riffs, from Grand Funk and Ted Nugent to Boston and Wings, gets slapped upside the head, especially when the band breaks out of verse-chorus mode and rips into a middle eight bristling with surprises. A brief drum barrage by Onassis zooms "Tequila Sundae" into overdrive, a sitar takes "Sister Havana" on an Eastern detour, and the sumptuous "Bottle of Fur" evokes Phil Spector with the addition of tubular bells.

Since forming in 1986, Urge have never lacked for ideas. But on Saturation they cut away the fat, with the help of producers Joe and Phil Nicolo, the Butcher Brothers of Philadelphia's Ruffhouse hip-hop label. "Dropout" in particular bears the Butchers' street touch, with Onassis singing over a shuffling drum loop. But it's the guys in Urge who are the real winners here. In the past, style has set them apart. On Saturation, it's the songs. (RS 663)

GREG KOT