It seems all the rage at the moment to be celebrating 1995, that golden year of Brit-pop, when two brothers from Manchester cemented their place in rock history via their second album, a whole lot of swagger, and no small amount of stolen T-Rex riffs and Beatles grooves. But the real story was actually taking place in Oxford, of course, in the form of, as any discerning music fan knows, the formation of The Mighty Redox.
And, unlike those Mancunian candidates, this band has stayed the course, and as they reach their thirtieth year, they celebrate with a new album, Love’s A Demon, which is the perfect summation of their strange hippy-punk, avant-pop sonic blend. Even if you are new to the band, this drops you in at the deep end….and the water is lovely.
The title track kicks things off perfectly, a Patti Smith snarl over a New York punk take on a krautrock groove —the coming together of two parts of the 1970s that never really met until now: the imaginary sound of the Lower East Side…of Düsseldorf!
By the time we get to “Why Wait,” we have crossed to the other side of the spectrum and headed into Zappa territory, things are more swampy and more than slightly psychedelic, slide blues running through a strange, cosmic country-rock sound. Man, this band covers some distance.
Talking of which, “Zomba Beat” sounds like a gothic B52s jamming with a more lucid, post-Floyd Syd Barrett as the house band in a Latino nightclub….slightly mad, totally marvelous.
I should stop there; the more I describe the band or attempt to in my clumsy fashion, the more I fear that things are becoming increasingly confused rather than clearer. Just buy the record; when I say that it has something for everyone, I don’t mean it in the usual, compromised, and crowd-pleasing way; instead, that The Mighty (a prefix thoroughly deserved) Redox is the most adventurous and genre-hopping, exploratory and forward-thinking band you will hear in a long time, especially if you think those two aforementioned brooding and brawling brethren are the way forward musically.
