Jeff and Steven McDonald have been doing this longer than The Lemon Twigs have been alive. Over the decades, Redd Kross has turned from a sort of jokey approximation of the worst of Seventies guitar excess into a real band. The songcraft has been refined, and the brash snottiness of what was on albums in the Eighties, is now a bold adherence to the kind of catchy material that stands on its own next to the work of the very same inspirations that the McDonalds were always drawing from.
Redd Kross is the new record and it's almost an epic. A double album on vinyl (but short enough to fit onto a single CD), this one is a beast. From the power pop of "The Main Attraction", to the stadium rock of "Candy Colored Catastrophe", and on to the straighforward charms of "Stunt Queen", the best numbers here find the McDonald brothers at the peak of their powers. The selections are uniformly bright and smartly put together. Fans of stuff like Jellyfish -- a band that owed more than a thing or two to Redd Kross in the first place! -- will find Redd Kross right up their sonic alleys. "What's In It For You?" and "Good Times Propaganda Band" even seems cousins of the songs of contemporary peers The Lemon Twigs.
If there's any criticism to be lobbed at Redd Kross it's that this is just too much rawk. Every song is catchy and pleasing on the ears, but at the expense of variety. There's little here that changes the mood, and nearly every song hits the same sort of pleasure centers in a listener. I'm not complaining as much as warning that a little goes a long way. Redd Kross are so good at this now, so professional about it, that the ramshackle cheek of their early records is hard to find. Still, the autobiographical "Born Innocent" is sort of sweet, and it reminds us of just how wild and weird this band's always been. There are flashes of that here, of course, and there's something admirable about this band still. They're making the kind of material that is the product of all that they listened to as kids in the Seventies and Eighties, and they succeed in making this pop with energy more often than not. That's more than enough of a ringing endorsement.
Redd Kross by Redd Kross is out on Friday via In The Red Records.
[Photo: Wanda Martin]