| CD REVIEW The Dirty Reds |
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Band : The Dirty Reds Following the collapse of their former musical project, South London based Indie Rock act The Dirty Reds started jamming as a three-piece in the shed of lead guitarist Craig Clydesdale’s parents’ house during Summer 2007, to find out this limited their musical aspirations. So he, singer/ bassist Tom Minchin, and drummer Grant Butterfill recruited second guitarist Stuart Tuck (also vocals) to accomplish a fuller sound. Spending the rest of the Summer writing and rehearsing a batch of songs, they did their first gig (well attended by people eager to find out how the threesome had evolved from their former band) soon after, and recorded their first demo (a 4-track affair recorded for a minimum of cash) at the end of the year. The demo definitely opened the way to more and more headlining shows at increasingly bigger and more prestigious venues and, aided in this by the band’s aggressive, energetic and memorable shows (which got them comparisons such as “…with the arrogant, self assured swagger of the Gallagher brothers and the raw, raucous energy of the Libertines…”), TDR managed to play support to such as The Happy Mondays, The Thirst, and The Tunics. After writing a batch of new songs during and towards the end of 2008, the foursome eventually got themselves a publishing deal with a certain record label, and jumped into the Philia Studios where, under productional guidance of producer Nick Hemingway, they recorded the 12 songs for their debut album. The music on those 12 tracks is of a certain simplicity, but with intertwing guitar melodies that are catchy, plus lyrics and a vocal style which simply demand sing-alongs during shows! There’s quite a bit of Grunge influence in the songs, occasionally coming to the fore quite ostensibly (just check out the song “If You Want It” for good measure). And that ain’t so surprising seen the couple of bands from that genre the band mentions in the rather long list of influences that can be found at myspace.com/thedirtyreds…where you’ll also find a 4-some of songs to savour (no, not the one mentioned above…check that one out in your local record shop). Apparently there’s quite an appetite for this kind of music, at least in the UK, ‘cause Amazon.com and Play.com sold out their batch of copies on the first day of release! Ah well, they’re nice Pop tunes, these, you know! Personally, I like my music a bit more challenging, but I dó appreciate stuff like this as well, when confronted with it on an occasional basis! 80/100 Tony. |