VHS or Beta get a bad rap as some kind of shallow '80s opportunist pirates. But that's a joke; how many acclaimed guitar bands in the Strokes' wake earned cause celebré for re-imagining the Me Generation as a treasure chest for fun hipster trash*? As with recent Dandy Warhols albums, all you can really charge VHS or Beta with is producing no hits.

The closest Bring on the Comets comes to the glistening mirrorball that is 2005's "You Got Me" are the synth-staircase hooked "Take It or Leave It," the U2-huge title track and the Kevin Rowland stomp of "Can't Believe A Single Word." But it's the sturdiest whole they've put their name on yet. The previous Night on Fire was an unprecedented juggernaut of Def Leppard-sized gloss, only it fumbled after a few songs and retreated to clubby instrumental fare. Bad move: they got targeted for horning in on Daft Punk's territory without the proper credentials. Uncanny Robert Smith impersonator on vocals or not, they should've known sooner that the guitars were their gift to dance anyway. As if to apologize, the new album's first treat is "Euglama," a minute-long cheeseball of twin-guitar leads that Phil Lynott could pat his foot to.

No one should be surprised that VHS or Beta went for full-on arena-rock this time around. The sound of Night on Fire was too large to stay under the tight-wound austerity of techno, and the sound of Comets has plenty to get mistaken for that isn't Daft Punk. Like Duran Duran, A Flock of Seagulls, The Smithereens. The group sheds any remaining aspirations towards hip and delves into golden pools of reverb irony-free. The result is like if Sam's Town worked, without a sign of embarrassing wordplay, conceptual grandeur, or annoying moustaches. The words are blessedly innocuous, leaving the grandiosity to the sound alone, which is positively huge on the pumping "Burn It All Down" or the airlifted "Love In My Pocket." The piano-tickling "The Stars Where We Came From" is an asteroid of a power ballad to end on, and "She Says" boasts a hook that could even swipe a bit of the Killers' radio time: spooky guitar lines from U2's "New Year's Day" and the best falsetto "doo-doo-doo" chorus since Third Eye Blind. The soaring Euro-pyrotechnics posit the album tall in the context of Interpol, Editors and any other neo-reverb band. Take everything that annoys you about those dour fucks. Now caulk the insides with better songs.

*who am I kidding, that's what the 1980s were.