Labels: Keith
Review by: Andy Malcolm
I didn’t know bands still played this kind of stuff! I guess it’s out of my ‘spectrum’ of musical interest lately though, so I suppose they must do. There are probably still hundreds of the buggers out there somwhere. Hmm. I guess I better tell you what type of stuff it is. Well, Redbank play a very much 1998/99 styled, post-emo / indie thing. If you were bored enough to hunt back to my reviews of this kind of stuff back in 1999 you would probably find various miserable “ugh, this sucks” type comments. Well, having mellowed a touch since then, I can appreciate this sort of thing these days and am not such a grouchy bastard. I guess that because I am not saturated with bands playing a soul-less version of this kind of music that it doesn’t bother me as much any more.
I would compare Redbank to bands from that period such as the Jazz June (who are still going or something? wonder if they still sound exactly the same), a pretty obscure band who put out one 7″ but their name escapes me right now but it had a white cover and 2 cool songs on it (I think they went on to do a band called Situation At 1200 if that helps?), and Mid Carson July (circa the first 2 cd’s and not the awful 3rd one with the aeroplanes on the cover). If any fucker compares this to Christie Front Drive though, I will stab them in the face.
Redbank have pretty whiney high pitched vocals, although sometimes they yell, and the guitars are all melodic and go ROCK OUT, ROCK OUT, jingle jangle. Ya know, just like how all those other bands that love ‘Diary’ by SDRE do. It’s got just enough energy and is fun and tuneful and I like it, apart from the final song. The production on here could be accused of being lousy, but apparently it was recorded at home. All power to that, DIY dudes!
All told, you have 7 songs and 22 minutes of catchy, melodic ’98-’99 stylee post-emo, something that I didn’t have time for by mid 1999, but now I can appreciate a little further down the line. This CD has the spirit and sounds like a band who are enjoying what they do, and you can’t say fairer than that. It’s rough, it’s ready. It ain’t bad at all.
Still, what kind of an album title is ‘Machines Disregard My Pronoun’? Huh? “Keith’s won, Keith!”