Guilty pleasures found on ‘Tainted Love’

Shivaree

Tainted Love: Mating Calls and Fight Songs

Zoe Records

Impulse purchasers be warned: Shivaree’s fourth studio release, “Tainted Love,” is an album of cover songs, but it does not include the pop song of the same name, made famous by the sneering synth version recorded by one-hit wonder Soft Cell in 1981. The taint here is firmly affixed to the songwriters themselves — a musical rogue’s gallery of accused and convicted murderers, sex offenders, wife beaters, drug dealers, pedophiles and amateur pornographers.

Though none of the tracks is especially mind-blowing, Shivaree manages, by dint of excellent arrangements, to tease out the criminal element buried deep (or not so deep, as the case may be) within the songs. The songs represent a crazy quilt of styles and genres from the past 50 years, including old-time country, glam-rock, contemporary and classic rhythm and blues and heavy metal — basically everything but the sensitive, arty rock Shivaree writes and records on its original albums.

The album is a showcase for chanteuse Ambrosia Parsley, Shivaree’s talented lead singer. Her expressive style ranges from the whispery come-ons of Margo Timmins of the Cowboy Junkies to the straight-up, full-throated delivery of Norah Jones. Her band, Duke McVinnie and Danny McGough, and a host of guest musicians supply the inventive and unexpected arrangements.

They treat the Ike Turner song “My Heart Belongs to You” like a psychedelic Dixieland jamboree, with a tuba bleating out the bass line, giving way to a fun-house theremin solo. The Motley Crue single “Looks That Kill” becomes a synth-driven James Bond anthem.

Michael Jackson’s “Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough” is nearly unrecognizable here. The original was a disco orgy of keyboards, guitar, horns and percussion that opened Mr. Jackson’s breakthrough solo album, “Off the Wall.” Miss Parsley offers a vampish, downbeat take that manages to be comic and weirdly creepy all at once with its sonic overlay of jazz flute and heavy breathing. Gary Glitter’s “Hello Hello I’m Back Again” comes across as the work of a jilted lover gleefully ignoring a restraining order. Special notice also must be given to the earnest, darkly sexy take on “Half on a Baby” by R. Kelly, who transforms the sweet-talking R&B ballad into a forbidding dirge with a funereal keyboard track punctuated by a steady, grim drumbeat.

Despite the felonious tenor of the material, a spirit of fun prevails. It feels like something a close-knit group of musicians would record in their spare time in a basement studio, breaking into hysterical laughter between takes.