Frankie and the Witch Fingers’ Trash Classic feels like a lost artifact from the past, capturing that zany mid-’80s energy when pop culture was overrun with wacky mad scientists, CRT-glow TV sets, and hyperactive soundtracks. Weird Science and Re-Animator, dripping in neon, with the DNA of Oingo Boingo and The B-52s, it feels like the best Devo album that Devo never made.

Full of twangy, frantic guitar lines and metronomic funk rhythms, every track on Trash Classic is a tightly wrapped little package, a 45-minute burst of hyperactive funk-punk urgency that somehow never exhausts itself. Channel Rock sets the stage like an old TV switching on before T.V. Baby crashes in with a blitz of bright, tightly looped guitar riffs and wobbling synths. The riffs are sharp, fast, and disciplined, locking into grooves like James Brown’s backing band, repeating intricate loops until they burn in your brain whilst the synths whirr, chirp, and spiral like a mad scientist’s lab equipment.

It’s astonishing how consistent the energy across Trash Classic is. The band establishes its frenetic new wave funk-punk sound early, and keeps finding new ways to keep a fixed tempo thrilling, leaning harder and harder into their propulsive sound as the album continues. By the time Total Reset explodes late on in the tracklist, you realize they haven’t let up for a second. Lyrically, Trash Classic riffs on decay, overconsumption, constant advertising, overstimulation, and brain-rot culture, but the music itself is too fun and gleefully maniacal to ever feel bleak. It’s more Weird Al than Orwell, dystopia with a sense of humour.

The closing title track is the crown jewel. Beginning as another blisteringly tight funk-punk banger, it spends five-minutes of its eight-minute run time in a psychedelic breakdown, drifting into Pink Floyd-esque deep space textures before building back up to a euphoric final crash, proving that the band can stretch their hyperactivity into something cosmic without losing an ounce of momentum. Trash Classic is a dance-rock record that begs to be experienced live, with every track feeling like an advert for the stage show, radiating sweaty, communal joy in a sea of manic grooves.

The playing is intricate, but the energy surges outward in every direction, tight but unrestrained, feeling like a fantastic party captured on record. The synths are old-school in the best way, buzzing like something that could have been ripped from an ‘80s sci-fi flick, and Trash Classic defiantly rejects modern rock’s obsession with heaviness. Instead of downtuned sludge and walls of fuzzed-out guitars designed to overwhelm by sheer force of gear, Frankie and the Witch Fingers build their wall of sound through their massive, unstoppable performance.

Trash Classic is thrilling in the same way the best live shows are. Sweaty dance-punk for people who want to get lost in the chaos, leaning fully into fun and groove, and feeling like a chaotic neon-lit theme park for the weird. Frankie and the Witch Fingers have revived a sound that many dearly love, and shown us what made that era so fun in the first place.