Frenetics

The Frenetics are a Montreal band formed by ex-members of Sissy Havoc and Viskamica, but fortunately they turned their back on their previous styles to produce something more interesting. Their debut, the Scenery EP, has six spiky little rock tunes that don't quite qualify as punk, but are too noisy to be called pop. The band list their influences as being as wide-ranging as the Jam, Social Distortion, Billy Bragg and Eddie Cochran, but that isn't particularly obvious to the casual listener because it doesn't feel particularly deep. There are decent catchy tunes, though, and the first half of the EP should be enough to pull you in for the lesser latter half. Every so often the guitars begin to growl a bit more and you get the feeling that there is a lot of restraint being shown here, and if you see the band live, things get a lot wilder. But they do a good job of containing the energy of a live-sounding performance onto a shiny disc and that's more than most bands do these days.