Crazy Nights

Crazy Nights keeps thick guitars while pushing keyboards and big choruses to the front on KISS’s fourteenth album. The songs are compactly built, and the vocals of Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons each add a different color — a record swinging hard toward 1980s-style arena rock. From the lift of the title track “Crazy Crazy Nights” and the balladic reach of “Reason to Live” to the drive of “Bang Bang You” and the flair of “Turn On the Night,” the album takes in the trends of the day without hesitation, and polished production and sing-along choruses create a stage-ready cohesion. Boldly incorporating keyboards, it still never loses the rock-and-roll drive at the band’s root, while a harder cut like “Hell or High Water” adds contrast. Embracing the era’s sound and playing it on the grandest scale, it is a record that shows KISS’s strength in the late 1980s.