From the mod-squad packaging to the tight harmonies, the Nuggets-era guitar work to the covers of songs made famous by a who's who of '50s and '60s giants, this is an album that looks, feels and smells like it has spent a couple of decades in your basement. It's actually the work of five 20-something Montréalers who have miraculously captured not just the details but the anarchically sweet spirit of rock's infancy. On Top of Things may at first seem like a museum reproduction of musical styles that most of us never experienced first hand, but it is invigorated with an infectious joy that transcends and enlivens what might otherwise have been tired material. This is the kind of album that will make you smile even as you pick out what makes it derivative -- and that you'll find yourself humming along to even as you try to resist it.

More than half the album's tracks are originals, written by singer Alexandre Boivin and, in most cases, lead guitarist Sébastien Hould. These borrow freely from the canon -- the guitar lick in opening track "Her Name Is Love" sounds very much like the one the Stones used in "The Last Time", for instance, and "It's Not the End" has a strong Roy Orbison feel. There's also a pretty direct quote of the guitar riff from "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" in "Look the Other Way", and even in the tracks where you can't quite put your finger on it, you often get an unmistakable whiff of familiarity.

Still need a few hints about where this band is coming from? Just look at the covers. The band finds the tight, happy groove at the bottom of pop-blues maestro Jimmy Reed's "Baby What You Want Me to Do", Frédéric Charest's percolating funk bass pushing forward, Hould's Townshendian guitar slashes breaking the piece into artful chunks. That's a song that used to belong to Elvis and the Byrds, and you can hear a little of both in tunes that oppose the King's strutting bluesy sexuality with sweet California harmonies. Then it's on to "Fortune Teller", an Allen Toussaint song covered by the Who, The Rolling Stones and now The Chains. The Chains obviously look to both for inspiration, but come off more as a teen-idol version of The Who than the leeringly dirty Stones, and slip in a goofily giddy spoken-word and drum break that would have sounded just right on the Ed Sullivan Show. Finally, The Chains go rockabilly in Eddie Cochran's "Nervous Breakdown", a three-minute coil of '50s rock energy.

You'll have to decide for yourself, but to me, On Top of Things is just way too much fun to be dismissed as a history lesson. From the angular proto-garage of "Loving Man" to the wipe-out-style drums of "Look the Other Way" to the giddy Booker T meets the Byrds groove of "Soulin'", this record is consistently a blast. Maybe you can resist the swirling psychedelic harmonies and soaring instrumental breaks of "Nothing Left Behind". Maybe you're not going to fall for the chugging funk-laced drive of "Loving Man". If so, you're a lot stronger than I am -- but just between us, you should maybe loosen up a little.