L.A. band Frankie and the Witch Fingers arrive in Eugene July 18 at WOW Hall behind one of the most dynamic rock records of the year, Trash Classic, and astride perhaps the most compelling rock show in the business.
Frankie guitarist and singer Dylan Sizemore tells Eugene Weekly in a phone call he’s “too ADHD” to write a concept record, stressing Frankie lyrics are mostly his, but Witch Fingers’ songs are collaborative.
But like past Frankie records, Trash Classic — the band’s eighth, along with several other EPs and live albums — offers concept-like themes.
This time, early MTV synthesizers add a new wave edge to the Witch Fingers’ Camaro-driving hard rock, spastic punk and exacting prog-rock influenced songwriting.
The record is also somewhat topical: “Surrender to inflation!” Sizemore sings on “Economy.” The album opens with the cacophonous sound of switching TV channels, before segueing into “T.V. Baby.”
“This is overstimulating!” Sizemore exclaims in the song, referencing modern media overload, over a looping, stop-start guitar riff and battering beat.
Frankie’s 2023 album Data Doom, meanwhile, featured horn arrangements, providing an unlikely Afrofunk feel to the music that, on record as on stage, seems propelled by a ripcord: You may hear power pop similar to The Knack, and Primus-style avant-garde merrymaking, especially in Sizemore’s singing voice, which sometimes recalls an angry Weird Al (and that’s a compliment).
Particularly on Trash Classic, though, Sizemore’s band nods to Devo in herky-jerky grooves, strange sci-fi influenced imagery and Atari-era electronic textures, reminding us that Devo were once a formidable, groundbreaking punk band before they became a “whip-it-good” punchline.
This is especially true of songs like “Eggs Laid Brain,” which begins with a buzzing keyboard line, developing into a pulsing beat and an explosive, shout-along chorus.
“When it clicks, it feels amazing,” Sizemore says of his band performing those songs and more in concert, and the uncanny racket the band makes on stage.
“That’s why we all do it,” he says. “At the end of the day, we’re trying to get to not thinking about things, and you’re just in the performance.”
The Witch Fingers formed around Sizemore and the multi-instrumentalist Josh Menashe, who’ve been the core of the band since it started in 2013 in Bloomington, Indiana, before relocating to L.A. around 2015, Sizemore says.
These days, Frankie’s rhythm section consists of Nicole “Nikki Pickle” Smith on bass and Nick Aguilar on drums, who together are a reminder that once upon a time, punk, hard rock and metal adjacent music could also have groove. John Modaff rounds out the sound on synthesizers.
Frankie songs are “disjointed versions of what I’m thinking about,” Sizemore says. “I’m a daydreamer,” he says, who thinks about “really weird things all the time. That’s the sort of stuff that ends up being mish-mashed into the lyrics.”
“For this last record, having synthesizers and having things be more punk and immediate was what we were going for. Then the stuff we were listening to that fit into that category made its way into the record: That early, synthy punk sort of feel,” he says.
Frankie and the Witch Fingers have been around a while, amassing a cult following. They’ve opened for ZZ Top and Cheap Trick, and toured with neo-garage rock hipsters Ty Segall and The Oh Sees. In a just world, Trash Classic would be their headliner breakthrough.
“There’s making music on a creative level: Friends doing what they love to do, which is how we started,” Sizemore says.
“Then, especially when we moved out to L.A., there’s a sense of like, trying to make it our living. And there’s a lot of sacrifice and hard work that goes into that. People have their lives, and things happen,” he says.
Still, he adds, the band is “about finding good friends and people you like to create with, but also finding people down to make those sacrifices.”Frankie and the Witch Fingers play with Dutch garage rockers Iguana Death Cult 8 pm Friday, July 18, at WOW Hall, 291 West 8th Avenue. Tickets are $25 advance, $30 at the door. The show is all ages.