Frankie and the Studs

First off, Hollywood’s Frankie + The Studs rock like hell. But you can sing along while you jack your fist into the air. They’re a mix of dirty converse, and messy black hair, slender hips and big kohl eyes, sexual tension and youthful verve, and you can tell their record collections are crammed with ’70s pop and glam, like Joan Jett, T. Rex and Bowie. This spanking new quartet plays impassioned rock ’n’ roll music—the essential kind that can only be made by kids who use power-chord shout-outs and spiky lullabies to define their nighttime worlds and busted hearts.

Frankie + The Studs will either be the saviors of rock ’n’ roll for a whole new generation of kids ready to smash culture to bits, or they’ll crash and flame out like The New York Dolls. No middle ground here.

But that’s rock ’n’ roll, how it was meant to be.