The interpreters are not long on talk. They're not long on anything. The trio's entire 16-tune debut album clocks in at just under 39 minutes. And the lyric meat in "Glorious" – at 2:30, one of the longest songs on the record – is strictly lean cuisine, a whole lotta "Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!," "Go, go, go, go, go, go, go!" and "Woah! Woah! Woaaah-ooo-oh!"

But who needs words when you get kicks like these: drummer Branko Jakominich's hydro-Keith Moon tempo tantrums; the snapped-neck effect of Patsy Palladino's seesaw guitar seizures; bassist Herschel Gaer's bratty vocal cool; and the other two's reform-school-choir background yelps. There isn't much going on in terms of tonal color or deep emotional theater in either "Dogskin Report" or "She Took It Shy." But at 1:07 and 1:43 respectively, everything that does happen in those songs – breakneck power-trio clatter, lusty rah-rah chorales – happens all at once, with racing-heartbeat zest and military concision.

These Philadelphia-based rascals look back, way back, for inspiration. Palladino is a riffer in the slash 'n' skid tradition of Maximum R&B-era Pete Townshend (the opening flourish of "Ironic ... Blowout" is a direct crib from "My Generation"), and the weird combo of stuttering brass and the boyish insouciance of Gaer's singing makes "Take It Away" sound like hypertensive flower-power Stax. But the Interpreters know how to make real drama out of repetition (the one-note menace of the intro to "Uptight"), and their gift for fashioning entire songs out of sustained, exploding-guitar crescendos ("Where Do We Go When") proves that the one thing missing from most other '90s power pop is ... well, power. Plug this in and compare. (RS 774)

DAVID FRICKE