he garage-punk resurgence of the early ‘00s has been reliable for some truly great does-the-trick rushes, juicy little nuggets like the Ponys’ Laced With Romance and the Catheters’ swan song Howling…It Grows and Grows!!!. Unfortunately, those albums failed to reach their target audience: TV producers were probably too busy searching for the next Vines to sell their iPhone/Volkswagen/Adam Brody vehicle or something. The Willowz’ eponymous debut in 2004 similarly made few waves, unless you followed Yahoo’s 2005 “Who’s Next?” competition like it was Internet Idol. It’s too bad: its bratty, snarling white noise recalled Richard Hell & the Voidoids and was all over in 20 minutes—it was the type of record that should’ve reclaimed the art of the short attention span from AFI fans the country over.

One person who did notice was acclaimed director Michel Gondry, who snuck the band’s songs into the Golden Globe-nominated Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and last year’s The Science of Sleep. Gondry probably didn’t introduce these kids to his frequent collaborators the White Stripes—they would’ve heard them anyway—but I don’t know how he could’ve otherwise predicted this group would change its rhetoric to sound so much like them.

Don’t get me wrong: this is a good thing. I prefer the two-minute popped-blister “Ulcer Soul,” which recalls the vocal stylings of “Fell in Love with a Girl”-era Jack White, to anything else on the drawn-out ballads-and-jamming of 2005’s Talk in Circles. That follow-up was triple the debut’s length and came out too soon, a weirdly-sequenced mess that started strong but went on forever. Two years later, the band hasn’t altogether tightened up again (which is good, this is still a garage act), but they have tempered things back to a more digestible 45 minutes and emerged with a far more cohesive record.

Though their website bio claims Chautauqua is more focused on “songwriting,” the album’s more of groove travelogue from a band who just three years ago seemed way too slippery to pull off such a thing. Now they evoke a mysterious van ride through Americana, collecting sounds from Mississippi (the back-porch slide blues of “Jubilee”) and, er…Detroit (that fuzz-guitar break in “Nobody”). And with lo-fi long in their rearview, they beef up the drums like Bonham-for-dummies or Meg-White-for-geniuses.

Now with “songwriting” on the table, these punks-no-more would like you to know they’re going for the big statement. There’s that mouthful title; Chautauqua means either “jumping fish” in Iroquois or a rural movement of adult-education summer camps that Teddy Roosevelt once championed. And there’s that opening, “Beware,” where two minutes after they promise over and over, “You’re gonna feel it when it hits,” it hits. The wah-drenched swamp-rock turns into Led Zeppelin II and vaults for the peak with drums bish-bashing everywhere. It’s like a sensible version of Sleater-Kinney’s The Woods—without the gnashing tension wound so tight it’s gonna break up the band.

A good sign: when they smother the ballad with a string section like any Zeppelin rip worth its weight in lemons, they actually make it out alive. The epic “Evil Son” isn’t going to spark any lighters, but it might a few bongs. Halfway through, God bless their ADHD, the little brats tune to the key of Wolfmother and garrrrumph out a convincing imitation of one-chord Sabbath before breaking down again in what sounds like a cavalcade of smashing music boxes. It isn’t exactly Boris, but it is the most ambitious track this band’s ever put forward and they pull it off. So, what’s next? If the move from the White Stripes to Zeppelin is any indication, the band’ll be aping someone like Pink Floyd in 2009. Then again, they might get away with that, too. Just don’t expect it to satisfy your 20-minute punk rush.