The Matrix reloaded The Mooney Suzuki get some professional help BY CARLY CARIOLI

The Mooney Suzuki’s conception of garage rock has been a narrow one. Their previous two albums adhered to clichés that didn’t change much between the Sonics in the mid-’60s and the Makers in the mid-’90s: wraparound shades, bowl cuts, tight black slacks, and trebly fuzz guitars. The hitmaking production team the Matrix thinks big, so the major-label debut album it has produced for the Mooneys, Alive & Amplified (Columbia), amounts to a highlight reel of 30 years of retro-rock fantasy. The disc sounds like what most 15-year-olds probably hold in their mind’s eye when they imagine what the ’60s and ’70s were like: free love, clean drugs, happy psychedelia, up-with-people optimism. It’s the kind of garage-rock album you’d come up with if your closest reference point were Hair.

Alive is, in a word, groovy, with all the camp and kitsch that word connotes. But it’s also fun novelty pop. If there’s been no Liz Phair–strength backlash against the Mooneys (yet), the reason might be that the band’s fans share the Mooneys’ affection for a garage-rock tradition of overbearing producers, stretching from Phil Spector to the Donnas’ nascent impresario, Darin Raffaelli. Then again, it might be that no one considers the Mooney Suzuki’s forfeiting their originality to be any great loss. For six years now, the Mooney Suzuki have been an attitude in search of a song. Since the Matrix is essentially great songwriters in search of artists with attitude, it’s a perfect match — a marriage of style and substance, to which frontman Sonny James seems to be alluding on the new disc’s opening track, "Primitive Condition": "Ooh, baby, you’re the missing link/between my brain and my instinct."

The Mooneys have been hedging, telling any interviewer who’ll listen they had to fight the Matrix to avoid becoming a teen-pop band. The implication is they won the battle, though listeners may disagree. In fact, you might end up wishing the Mooneys had given the Matrix an even longer leash. The least interesting of the disc’s Matrix songs is "Legal High," which sounds the most like old Mooney Suzuki: guitars pledge bland allegiance to the MC5’s High Time and the Stones’ Sticky Fingers, while James offers solace to outcasts who "hunger for some kinda substance/but you’re just unloved and underpaid." But there’s a different version of the song — a hidden track after the disc’s final tune — that probably comes closer to what the Matrix had in mind. It’s got a name-game lyric about forgetting which groupie is due up next, and a far catchier bubble-gum chorus: "You’ve gotta get off to get on the love bus/oooh yeah!" Advantage: Matrix.

It would be convenient if Alive & Amplified sounded anything like, say, Hilary Duff’s Metamorphosis. It doesn’t. That’s not to say it isn’t over the top. The centerpiece is the title track, which saddles a loping beat built on "Sympathy for the Devil" congas and "Gimme Shelter" chords, then peaks with the sudden shrieking of a sun-drenched choral group à la the Polyphonic Spree. It’s got a million-dollar chorus that doubles back on itself like vintage Britney, and an ear-piercing, amp-shredding psychedelic guitar solo that Lenny Kravitz could’ve played. It may be the greatest Black Crowes song ever written.

The Matrix-penned "New York Girls" is an even catchier Elton John ripoff than the Scissor Sisters’ "Take Your Mama" — not content to borrow liberally from "Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting," it also steals a bridge from Bowie’s "Suffragette City," while James sneaks a shaggy melody from "Get You Off," by Jack White’s old band, the Go, into the chorus. The Matrix’s contributions go well beyond songwriting: its production insinuates itself into the Mooney-written songs, turning James’s pedestrian mimicry into fully outfitted homage. On the power ballad "Sometimes Somethin’ Comes from Nothing," a cluster of multitracked voices coalesces into lush Queen harmonies, while James slips into a Hendrix-ian rasp in the verse. (He might be the only rock frontman ever to worship Hendrix for his voice.) A chorus of soulful female voices transforms "Loosey Juicy" from a hookless blues-punk workout into a sweaty takeoff on Ike and Tina’s "Proud Mary." And on the backstage hanky-panky rocker "Messin’ in the Dressin’ Room," the Matrix coaxes the Mooneys out of the garage and into the glam-rock arena, where they strut their way through a dueling-guitar Kiss Army anthem complete with a cheesy spoken coda — Vampire girl: "Wouldn’t you like to step into something a little more comfortable?" James: "Like you?!"

The closing rave-up, "Naked Lady," has a certifiably classic acoustic-guitar lick (think Zeppelin’s "Hey Hey, What Can I Do"), and there’s such a genuine, swelling warmth to its bright, happy chorus that Marlo Thomas would probably approve — "Free to be/Natural as the Sunday morning/Free to be/Natural as the skin you’re born in." A deadpan soft-rocker in praise of nudism? Garage rock it ain’t. But it’s certainly camp. And for a band who were sinking towards kitsch until the Matrix showed up, that’s progress of a kind.