{"id":26904,"date":"2025-08-25T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-08-25T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rpmonline.co.uk\/?p=26904"},"modified":"2025-08-23T21:21:15","modified_gmt":"2025-08-23T20:21:15","slug":"redd-kross-the-crescent-york-21st-august-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rpmonline.co.uk\/?p=26904","title":{"rendered":"Redd Kross \u2013 The Crescent, York \u2013 21st August 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Coming on like The Monkees for the 90\u2019s, Californian Power Pop legends Redd Kross brought colour, quirkiness and most of all, FUN to a Grunge-filled music world. There was a period when all I listened to was \u2018Third Eye\u2019, \u2018Phaseshifter\u2019 and the two Jellyfish albums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their performance of \u2018Visionary\u2019 on The Word could be the best live performance of any band in a TV studio, and it was then I realised I had to see them live…yet it never happened. For one reason or another, the stars never aligned for me and Redd Kross…until now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following the release of last year’s excellent self-titled double album, the band are over here with The Melvins and they have a few shows of their own. One happens to be a 25-minute walk from my house; there is no way I am missing this!<\/p>\n\n\n

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Dressed in matching paint-splattered white outfits, like a walking & talking (well, singing) art piece on their way to an Indian wedding, Redd Kross walk on and fire straight into \u2018Huge Wonder\u2019. I never realised how tall Jeff McDonald is; the singer towers over guitarist Jason Shapiro. To his left, bassist and brother Steven gyrates his body like he’s being electrocuted. The man with the straightest hair in rock knows how to work a crowd, and his between-song Paul Stanley-esque raps are comedy gold that keeps the crowd up for a rock n\u2019 roll party.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u2018Stay Away From Downtown\u2019 is up next, a killer garage rock riff from Jeff\u2019s guitar and a sublime hook makes it an early highlight, damn I forgot how good that tune is. \u2018Stunt Queen\u2019 is the first of 5 tracks from the latest album. What a tune live, it has the attitude and the punk energy of classic Redd Kross, and I love it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just watching the brothers trade vocals, constantly smiling and moving, giving their all in the moment, it’s just magical to me. \u2018Lady In The Front Row\u2019 is the first sublime moment that gets the crowd singing every word. How could you not? It\u2019s ridiculously catchy. A red album double dose follows: the singles \u2018Candy Coloured Catastrophe\u2019 and the Steven-led \u2018I’ll Take Your Word For It\u2019 fit the bill nicely. There\u2019s only one track from the \u2018Third Eye\u2019 album on this tour, which might seem criminal to a die hard, but if you play one song from arguably your best album, then it must be \u2018Annie\u2019s Gone\u2019, right? I’m mesmerised as the frontman ditches his guitar, covers his face with a scarf and sings through it for the entire song. An ethereal, bizarre and truly emotive 3 and a half minutes of Power Pop perfection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Elsewhere, we get a high-energy one-two of \u2018Switchblade Sister\u2019 and Jimmy\u2019s Fantasy\u2019, with catchy riffs and hooks aplenty, plus a killer cover of The Beatles \u2018It Won’t Be Long\u2019 with Jeff shakin\u2019 that tambourine like it’s the last thing he’s ever going to do. A song they truly make their own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They return to jam out some oldies before bringing the whole room to a rock n\u2019 roll party climax with a killer \u2018Deuce\u2019, complete with Paul & Gene classic 70\u2019s stage moves thrown in for good measure.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Ok, so it’s been a long time coming, and I may be biased here, but Redd Kross truly blew me away tonight. I’ve seen a lot of great gigs already this year but tonight was truly special. Redd Kross are a band who are at the top of their game both live and creatively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Someone was shouting for then to play \u2018Zira (Call Out My Name)\u2019 tonight, and after a few bars that ended in Jeff laughing and saying he doesn’t remember it, Steven says they\u2019ll come back next year and play the whole gaddamn album! Now that would be truly something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Author: Ben Hughes<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Coming on like The Monkees for the 90\u2019s, Californian Power Pop legends Redd Kross brought colour, quirkiness and most of all, FUN to a Grunge-filled music world. There was a period when all I listened to was \u2018Third Eye\u2019, \u2018Phaseshifter\u2019 and the two Jellyfish albums. Their performance of \u2018Visionary\u2019 on The Word could be the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26909,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[1787,2212,1710,1681,1833],"class_list":["post-26904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-live-review","tag-its-a-revolution","tag-redd-kross","tag-rpm-online","tag-rpmnews1","tag-tourlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rpmonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rpmonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rpmonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rpmonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rpmonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26904"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rpmonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26904\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26910,"href":"https:\/\/rpmonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26904\/revisions\/26910"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rpmonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/26909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rpmonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rpmonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rpmonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}