Cherri Bomb: Stark

Shouldn’t you girls be in school? Actually, scratch that, you shouldn’t be in school, because your debut has more life, melody, and energy than 90 percent of the stuff on rock radio at any given moment. You should be rock and roll stars.

Stark is the debut EP from the 15-ish-year-old female foursome Cherri Bomb, and it does a frankly fantastic job of rocking out in all the ways you want to rock out when you’re a teenager with rock ‘n roll dreams. That is to say, there is nothing terribly original about it — there’s a cover of a Foo Fighters song, for one thing, and the rest of it sounds like a mixture of Paramore, My Chemical Romance, more Foo Fighters, a dash of Metallica, and a hint of Avril Lavigne when she was still fun. Originality or not, though, opener “Mirror Mirror” kinda rips, “Spin” does well to let its instruments get out of the three part harmony’s way just before and after the bridge, and that cover of the Foos’ “The Pretender” is a pretty convincing facsimile of the original. All the while, the slick, big-label production keeps things punchy.

There’s no way Stark is the last we hear of Cherri Bomb. There’s too much pop-rock potential in these teens for them to stay a supporting act for much longer.