After releasing three albums of rambunctious, garage rock-inspired good-time noise, Jacuzzi Boys' fourth album, Ping Pong, heads off in a slightly different direction. The trio tamp down pretty hard on their natural enthusiasm and tap into some hard rock and traditionally '90s sounds to deliver their heaviest album to date. Unfortunately, it's also their least impressive album to date. Focusing the guitars into a single stream of processed grunge crunch, turning the bass and drums into a steady thudding machine, and dumbing down the lyrics even more than usual weren't great ideas. Most of the album struggles to make an impression as it lumbers from one simplistic track to the next, sounding listless and overcooked. Even the songs that have a little bit of punk rock bite like "New Cross" or "Strange Exchange" aren't enough to counteract the overwhelming sense that the band has swung too far away from their scrappy roots. The sound on Ping Pong is too reductive and monotonous, the energy level is turned down to lethargic, and the songs just aren't there like they used to be. Before this album, Jacuzzi Boys were a pretty dependable band, counted on for fun and frolicking garage punk style. Now they just sound like another '90s revivalist band angling for a spot on the Weezer cruise. It's a disappointing turn of events for the band, the kind that might lose them a bunch of their fans, while failing to win them any new ones in return.