The Posies clearly have something to prove. The band’s clamorous fourth album, Amazing Disgrace, is the first on which their punk influences get equal time. Founding members Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow have a well-documented allegiance to ’60s pop: The band has recorded reverent covers of hits by the Five Stairsteps, the Hollies, and the Zombies, and even toured with Big Star in 1993. (Their own Dear 23 has attained Sgt. Pepper status in certain circles.) Yet the Posies’ loud, aggressive live performances have always presented a contrast to the melodious, prettily layered pop on their records. Disgrace sets out to change all that: It’s three tracks into the album before there’s a song that “sounds like the Posies” (“Throwaway”), and nine before there’s one with a really effective hook (“World”). There are simply not many standout tunes here—fewer even than there are on the band’s last album, the awkwardly transitional Frosting on the Beater. The Posies’ lyrics are still awfully elliptical but, in accordance with the new harshness, they now have a generous complement of dirty words: “Ontario,” for instance, poses the distinctly uncharacteristic question, “Who gives a shit?” The Posies suffered the misfortune of being a Seattle band that didn’t sound anything at all like Nirvana, and they weigh in on the “Seattle scene” in “Grant Hart,” a song that berates the “nervous children making millions” by ripping off Hüsker Dü. But Auer and Stringfellow are not entirely successful at suppressing their pop instincts. The melodic “Everybody Is a Fucking Liar” is not nearly as angry as its title, and “Hate Song,” which features “screams” by Robin Zander and a “guitar freakout” by Rick Nielsen, is almost catchy. And though the disc’s first song, “Daily Mutilation,” is fierce by Posies standards, its last song, “Will You Ever Ease Your Mind?,” is downright Beatlesque. The Posies play at the 9:30 Club June 29.

—Nicole Arthur