Redshift Headlights - If You Are Around Still (self-released)

To this British ear, there is something very American about the music that Redshift Headlights makes. And I mean that in the most positive and complimentary of ways, of course. There is an idea that, given the cross-pollination of modern music, technology means that even the most niche sounds can be heard in the most far-flung places, and because of this sonic ubiquity, almost all musical influences can be felt everywhere around the globe, that music no longer automatically reflects the place that it was made. This is true, to a degree, but If You Are Around Still oozes with American sonic moods and emotions, experiences and lives, and does so to such a degree that the land of its birth can be in little doubt.

There are some sounds that are as American as apple pie: blues, grunge, college rock, and a certain strain of angsty and angular indie-rock. Others have copied them, but few have gotten close, and all of those are found at work here, along with broader, perfect alt-rock blends of muscle and melody, grit and groove.

“Summertime” might feel like just another indie rock groover, but the intricate guitar lines that spiral through, the clashing swathes of power chords, that well-executed middle-eight lift, and those few moments when the Rhodes makes its presence felt, mark the song apart from the pack—a long way apart.

And if “Love Monsters” starts in almost New Wave territory, it quickly subverts the form, moving through a very progressive indie web and some mercurial, arabesque moods; a constantly shifting song, its moves always one step ahead of the listener’s expectations. “There’s Another” calls up the Pacific Northwest’s 90’s influences for some cavernous grunge salvos, “Space Invaders” is an on/off, loud/quiet, light/shade masterstroke and the album ends with the title track, a song that feels like the sort of thing that Dave Grohl might have had in mind as Nirvana ended but which, for reasons that I won’t elaborate on, Foo Fighters will never get close too.

It might be the sound of alternative American rock, at least one strand of it, but it is music that the rest of the world will love, too. If a country’s national identity is often tied to the things that others criticize that place for, Redshift Headlights is everything that is quintessentially brilliant about the left-field history of American music. They should teach this album in schools.