The Cramps Recapture Initial Freshness

After floundering through a stretch of erratic live shows, numerous personnel shifts, record company woes and the danger of being stuck in a stylistic rut, the Cramps hit the Palladium on Friday with a healthy display of full-blooded, sexy, silly rock ‘n’ roll mayhem.

Like the Ramones, the Cramps never veer very far from their original game plan. But behind their strongest album in years, “Stay Sick!,” the band has recaptured its initial freshness. From Friday’s opening blast of the country blues staple “Muleskinner Blues,” the quartet’s obsessive, full-throttle power overwhelmed any concerns of stagnation. Add to that an innate sense of absurdity--where else would you find a singer in his early 40s named Lux Interior, clad in black vinyl bondage panties with matching stiletto-heel pumps, wiggling his lubricious way across the stage while hoarsely croaking something called “Daisys Up Your Butterfly”?

With guitarist Poison Ivy distilling a pristine concoction of punky, psycho-billy guitar lines as stately as the rhinestone tiara on her head, the Cramps remain crown fools of sex-camp grunge-rock, proof that arrested development can be its own best virtue.