Redmaxx –
‘Start Your Own Riot’ (Broken Face Records)
(reviewed Dec '04)
Long-term regulars on the Welwyn Garden City scene, Gav and Simon have assembled an album that tries to go beyond the limitations of home recording and self-released records. Though small-town-strife seems to be one of their main themes, I think they’re here to make a racket rather than for their lyrics to teach us The Way, and ‘The Panic Song’ gets things off to a suitably kick-arse start with a barrage of hard and fast music and screaming. It’s always a delight. I’ve found their trio to be one of the most exhilarating bands to watch round here just because they make such a great noise.
‘Start Your Own Riot’ is full of angry fun; a standout track, ‘Syntax Condition’ buzzes like a summer-pop-Radiohead. It shows there’s more to Redmaxx than the noise, since they can add good tunes to the garage-rock clatter, ‘Here In Your Hair’ lifted by its backing vocal. Along with a basic-seeming punk song like ‘Dress It Up How You Want’, there are also ballads to add light and colour. It’s an almost cheesy melody that chimes in ‘Bring Out Your Dead’, like a sentimental teen flick ending, but it works nicely; Redmaxx have their musical roots in American bands, and Pavement or the Pixies are probably two bands too mainstream to compare them to, but they share the same emotional culture. If pressed I’d say that Gav sings like a cross between, er, James Dean Bradfield and, um, old lo-fi stereotype Graham Coxon, a sort of snarling mumble, but puts the same sweaty passion into an aforementioned scream as he does into scribbling feedback. The album closer ‘U Switch Me Off’ is a stupendous stop-start monster which, played live, often involves pots and pans. Any experimentation in the band’s music has always been done with the gloves off: a sound of reckless abandon. Yay.
It did take a while for the quality of the tunes to come through to me, but this debut collection is, as Alan Titchmarsh might put it if he had a penchant for underground indie-rock, “a blooming grower.”
an old live review from when they were called Red Maxx, about a year before their album / www.redmaxx.net
