It’s been 45 years since Jeff and Steve McDonald – then aged 15 and 11 respectively – decided to throw their floppy hat into the rock’n’roll ring. However, despite influencing countless bands along the way – from to – 's back catalogue is frustratingly sporadic, the power-pop brilliance of late-80s/early-90s albums and submerged in the grunge tsunami. While the intervening years have been filled with all manner of intriguing side projects, the sense that the mainstream was missing out on the brothers’ melodic genius became clear with 2019’s .
Their self-titled ninth studio album finds them, if anything, in even finer fettle. ‘No more distractions, I hear this message coming through,’ Jeff sings in a soaring , and, as with most eponymous albums, there’s a sense of Redd Kross taking stock here, distilling their disparate influences into 18 tracks bristling with ideas and imagination. The duo’s enthusiasm is clearly shared by -like drummer and producer Josh Klinghoffer, whose kinetic connection with Steve began when they were both in touring bands for Beck and Sparks.
So we get crunchy glam riffing ( ), gnarly garage rock ( ) and edgy new wave ( ) all laced with some deadly, score-settling lyrics. finds McDonald snarling: ‘ ’, while is a spiky adieu to an old rival (‘ ’), culminating with him yelling: ‘ ’ A discordant , meanwhile, feels like an infuriated dig at the trope of artists gaining more critical respect the less tuneful they are, wh.