Terry Malts - Distracted by Slumberland Records

San Francisco's Terry Malts have been a mysterious presence on the local scene for a while now. Popping up with great regularity on gigs around town, they come, they slay, then they disappear into the dark night. Their tunes are catchy like fishhooks, jumping off from such familiar touchstones as Ramones and Buzzcocks, stopping off with some fine SoCal friends like The Crowd, The Descendants, and Red Cross, somehow arriving at an energetic modern power-pop/punk amalgam not too far from The Exploding Hearts and The Clorox Girls. It's a time-honored pop recipe, leavened by the band's top-notch song-writing and their barely-concealed fondness for 70s and 80s bubblegum.

The three songs on this single have been floating around on tape for a minute, passing from hand-to-hand like some well-loved piece of power-pop samizdat. "I'm Neurotic" kicks things off in blazing style, a fuzzy descending riff underpinned by steady-as-you-like drumming. Look out for the stun-guitar that blasts in halfway through -- shred-tastic. "Distracted" could just as well be an a-side itself, it's echoed vocal intro leading into a classic mid-tempo tune that wouldn't sound out of place on an Undertones record. Once you get to the "ooh-oohs" of the chorus you are, of course, hooked. "Where Is The Weekend?" wraps up this EP with what might be the Malts' most straight-up punk rock moment. Fast and frantic, it's a timeless ode to those two brief days when we're delivered from the work-week tedium by guitars, beer and chaos. Bring it on.