THE LOLLIES - Bang! Bang! Bang! Lookout, Lookout, Lookout!

Three girls and a boy playing drums might conjure up images of the likes of Kenickie, but it wouldn't really be fair in the case of The Lollies, where the similarities lie not with those ill-fated Geordie punka power-popsters but with those wonderful garage girl groups of the 1960s. Indeed, if The Lollies had been around about thirty-five years ago you'd be sure to find them on one of those cool Girls In The Garage compilations. Hailing two parts from Canada, one part from New York, and one part England, and sounding like a cross between The Ronettes, Sleater-Kinney and Helen Love, they're every bit as sugary sweet as their namesake candy, and thrive on energetic three-minute pop songs.

The garage group sensibilities are plain on the opening track of this four-track (plus a bonus track) EP. Organ laden '(Be My) Bad Boyfriend' is all crunching guitar and the sugary vocals of Jane Mountain and Kate St.Claire as they sing, in near 'Leader of the Pack' fashion about a skanky seductive boy from the wrong side of the tracks and the path he leads to a seat on Jerry Springer. This is followed by the Helen Love-esque 'I Found Myself At The Supermarket', a comparison caused mainly by the dominance of Rachel Angel's organ playing, which bounces along at a fair old rate, keeping the sugar-pop girl ideals ('I know I'll be happy in love forever more/ The day that I can buy a boy at the grocery store').

But stand-out track is the glorious 'Dayjob Nightmare', a three-minute gem in which the song's protagonist goes into her office and pulls a gun on her bosses. The sixties-tinged guitar Sleater-Kinney lead vocals and girl group backing vocals merge to produce a genuinely compulsive pop song that oozes class. Truly gorgeous stuff.

There's a bonus track here too. The hidden fifth track, a cover of Travis' 'Why Does It Always Rain On Me', as much as I hate to say it, is actually wonderful. Imagine the maudlin Fran Healy penned number transformed into a summery, groovy dancefest of a pop song, and you can figure out what this sounds like. Of course, the challenge now is whether The Lollies can do something similar with a Will Oldham song? we'll have to wait and see - PH.