The Record Hop: sexy music for un-sexy people

It ain’t often that Fort Worth plays host to a Big Regional Underground Rock Show, but this week’s the week, when Record Hop, Tendril, and The Murdocks roll into the Wreck Room for an 18-and-up performance.

The reason for the occasion is the release of Record Hop’s latest full-length, Pareidolia. The band’s jagged delivery is thunderous and roiling but often a little unsettling, as you’re sometimes pulled in one direction, then thrown in another. Vocalist Ashley Cromeens purrs like a pussycat with sour milk in her veins, while the other band members play like millionaires on pawn-shop instruments, giving every sound a distinctly sloppy slink. Very sexy music for un-sexy people.

By comparison, the boys in Tendril are killer-clean and surgeon-precise, in the way they harmonize and offer a blitzkrieg of hard-ass punk mixed with radio metal mixed with pure pop. It’s meat-and-potatoes rock ’n’ roll for the skinny times.

Right in the middle somewhere are The Murdocks, three Austinites whose four-song e.p. (featuring the killer single “Death of a French Whore”) reveals new wave-inspired garage rock torn straight from the first three Cheap Trick records (sans lyrical genius). Pogo-hopping, fist-pumping madness that rings of youthfulness trapped in adult frustrations, the sound is also reminiscent of The Knack. “My Sharona,” indeed. — Justin Press

Fri at the Wreck Room, 3208 W 7th St, FW. 817-348-8303.