Extra Fancy Jumps Back Into the Punk Fray of Muscular Rock

Rock bands do occasionally come back from the dead. Recent years have seen unlikely reunions of such iconoclasts as the Sex Pistols and the Velvet Underground, all to great fanfare. For the Los Angeles band Extra Fancy, the challenge is tapping back into the energy it enjoyed just a few years ago, before its momentum was hobbled by the sudden disappointment of being dropped by Atlantic Records not long after the release of its debut album.

At the Scream on Monday, Extra Fancy--which plans to reunite for occasional shows--demonstrated the same kind of urgency and punk-flavoredsongcraft that earned the quartet glowing reviews and a rabid local following in the mid-’90s. Singer Brian Grillo stood at center stage, banging out a primal beat on an overturned oil drum or serenading a go-go dancer during “You Look Like a Movie Star, Honey.”

The sound of Extra Fancy remained muscular and melodic at the Scream, with an arch personality that was both playful and taunting. And Grillo was an athletic and sometimes even acrobatic frontman, shirtless and writhing in front of his microphone, jumping into the crowd and doing a virtual back flip back onto the stage. Like the rest of Extra Fancy, Grillo remained a compelling performer well worth seeing again.