3 out of 5

Label: This Way Up

Producer: Redd Kross

As it has been with all the RK releases I’ve listened to, this made no impact on me on a first go, to the extent that I was ready to brush it off.  But some splashes of fun sprinkled through convinced me to give it another go with the volume pumped up.  And: this is probably one of the better pop-rock albums I’ve heard in my time.  Redd Kross have earned their abilities and lashes throughout their many years in the scene, but the nature of the group to leap-frog through styles means that, by this point in their career, they have no real identity.  They produced albums of iffyness by tossing their hats into particular genres – the hippie throwback album, the grunge album – but on ‘Show World’ they have thankfully tired of that and seem to have just gone back to writing songs.  Jeff McDonald’s lyrics are, as ever, pretty unpowerful, but the words are at least written, even the cheesier sounding tracks (based on the title) like ‘Girl God’ not just falling back on rhymes and repeats, but working to mix some creativity in there so Jeff can put some oomph in the singing.

Some tracks have great hooks, some tracks have really cool bursts of noise, some tracks have some nice production touches, but it’s just pop rock.  I’m glad the group decided to stop trying to regain some kind of underground crown with the different style masks, but the ‘great album’ that somehow bridges the gap between their early, energetic snottiness and the polish of the new had, by this point, still been unachieved.