After two years of near-constant touring in support of their self-titled debut album, the Nude Party headed back to their communal farmhouse in the Catskills to work on another full-length with Black Lips' Oakley Munson. The resulting follow-up, Midnight Manor, finds the six-piece still cranking out riff-fueled, freewheeling rock jams about booze and women (and the music industry). Indebted to '60s and '70s acts like the Velvet Underground, T. Rex, the Rolling Stones, and the Kinks throughout, the 12-track set has both swagger and nervous energy to spare. Opening with a chord progression pounded out on piano, it begins with the raucous glam-punk tune "Lonely Heather" ("When you twist, I hear the crinkle of your leather") before delving into the Southern-fried, Latin-tinged accents of "Pardon Me, Satan." Elsewhere, the sleazy "Thirsty Drinking Blues" drinks alone following a breakup, and "Easier Said Than Done" takes a slightly more theatrical approach to loose and dirty rock & roll. Veering toward the more sensitive side are tracks like the Rundgren-esque "Shine Your Light" ("In a world falling apart/You are the light in the lonesome dark") and the Jagger-evoking "Time Moves On," a song whose layered rhythms include more ballroom basics as well as sustained strums saturated in delay. It's one of several tracks here with airy, mid-century-styled backing vocals. Midnight Manor closes with the stripped-down prom slow dance "Things Fall Apart," followed by an irreverent acoustic ditty, "Nashville Record Co.," which laments "They don't come to make sense/They come to take dollars" and "Someday I fear they'll replace us all with machines." (Midnight Manor arrives courtesy of Nashville-based New West Records.) "Nashville Record Co." takes the filler-free album out, appropriately, on a honky tonk jam.