For the past few years, the Bad Off has been working the local clubs, perhaps energized by a renewed love of cock-rock that has inspired everyone from as near as Supagroup to as far away as that British flash-in-the-pan the Darkness. There’s this sense that the Bad Off loves to let it all hang out onstage, not unlike these other bands that seem to blurs the lines between self-possession and self-parody. Are they rock stars in training, or rock stars in idea? You be the judge.

Listening to the Bad Off’s self-released album, Lady Day—the much-awaited follow-up to its 2005 debut, Twilite in Eclipse—conjures similar notions. Lead singer Erik Corriveaux’s vocals range not too broadly between the leering, mystical posing of Robert Plant to the glam-rock bawdiness of the Darkness’ Justin Hawkins. On songs such as the opener “Bomb Drop,” Corriveaux seems totally in control, shrilling his vibrato and hitting his high notes and snaking around Brian Berthiaume’s crisp power chords with ease.

It’s a driving yet polished sound, smoothly urged on by the rhythm section of bassist Dan Lauricella and drummer Keith Hajjar (late of Rock City Morgue, and who replaced Jody Smith), but it’s unfortunate that it’s almost too derivative for its own good. When Corriveaux demands on the title track, “Waiting on the lady / When all the sparks have gotten nice and twice and shiny / And when it all drops down / Holler if you feel me.” Actually, it’s impossible not to feel the Bad Off; the challenge is to feel it a little more deeply.