Give
Puddle of Mudd credit for the title of their fourth album
Songs in the Key of Love and Hate, as it makes plain their obsessions while dropping an offhand allusion to
Stevie Wonder and
Leonard Cohen. Musically,
Puddle of Mudd hasn’t changed, still playing
Nirvana as if they were party music like
Stone Temple Pilots.
POM manages to crank out a brute-force riffs that hook deeper than it has any right to, and there’s amusement to hearing “Spaceship,” “Keep It Together” and “Out of My Way” play as the life cycle of a love affair with a stripper in its progression from sex to love to hate. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine