Alien Ant Farm

The Riverside, California, group reached a broad audience with ANThology in 2001. Their version of “Smooth Criminal” retained the original’s sharp rhythmic outline while replacing its polished tension with distorted guitar attack. The choice worked because the band understood the song’s motion. It was a recognisable tune played by musicians with their own sense of how a groove should behave.

Original songs provided the stronger argument for staying. “Movies” paired a buoyant guitar pattern with a vocal that could turn suddenly vulnerable, while “Attitude” and “Wish” showed different kinds of weight. Terry Corso’s guitar, Tye Zamora’s bass and Mike Cosgrove’s drums gave the songs enough internal detail to make the record more than an exercise in loud-and-quiet contrasts. Small rhythmic turns kept changing its shape.

TruANT arrived in 2003, with “These Days” and “Glow” bringing the melodic side further forward. The album’s cleaner spaces made it easier to hear how the bass and drums interacted with Mitchell’s phrasing. It retained heaviness, but the group was not simply trying to reproduce the first record’s biggest moment. There was a broader interest in songwriting, unusual chord movement and arrangements that could take an unexpected turn.

Up in the Attic added another chapter in 2006. Across these releases, the productive tension is between accessibility and eccentricity. A chorus may arrive exactly where a radio listener expects it, while the playing underneath remains a little crooked. That is the band’s most durable quality: the ability to make a song feel immediately available without sanding away every strange feature that made it theirs.