Monikers

Eat Your Young EP

Don’t let the cover illustration of a ’60s housewife dining on her baby’s entrails fool you: There’s nothing especially dark or evil going on with Monikers’ debut EP. The opening track of this tuneful five-song effort sounds like something dropped in from the early days of post-punk-maybe Psychedelic Furs before they sold their souls to MTV-while other cuts are post-Jawbreaker pop-punk with choruses Green Day could get on the radio but played just rough enough to keep the kids from crying “sellout.” Ryan Seagrist, formerly of Discount, has the kind of broken-speaker rasp that brings an automatic edge to the proceedings, even when he signs off with an unplugged ballad that sounds like the Goo Goo Dolls’ earliest stabs at stealing everything Paul Westerberg was too damn drunk to nail down. (KISS OF DEATH) Ed Masley