Your Fuzzy Friends hails from North Carolina. Probably the only indie electropop band fronted by a dancing overweight dude singing through a mustached, hipster unicorn puppet!  Profile picture courtesy of Austin Caine Photography.

Everyone's Talking! - available now!
https://alltimelow.lnk.to/everyonestalking

Redd Kross have always been too good, too perfect, too true, to believe. Mythic. Could this tuneful hardcore punk EP really be the work of a brother band with the 15-year-old on vocals and guitar and the 11-year-old on bass? Did Redd Kross really open for Black Flag? Could Jeff and Steve really have been born and raised in the Beach Boys’ hometown of Hawthorne, California, and did Jeff really see the Beatles live in 1966? Did one of them, dressed in Gene Simmons makeup, really kill a Bruce Springsteen impersonator onstage? Is that really their hair? Could Researching the Blues, their first studio album in 15 years, be not just the hottest thing since Cher went solo but the best start-to-finish Redd Kross record ever?

Somehow, the answer to all the above is improbably, wonderfully, beautifully YES. Long have Redd Kross rocked, and long have critics, devoted fans, Rodney Bingenheimer and fellow musicians from Seattle (Nirvana) to New York (Sonic Youth) to Driftwood, Texas (Butthole Surfers) to Hollywood (everybody) bowed before the Kross and their self-aware pre-spandex Glam bubblegum garage psychedelic Cheap Trick/Kiss/Revolver post-Kim Fowley rock and roll. Degenerate, sweet: tongues in cheek, song-long winks.

Commercial success may never have been theirs (if time and space had been aligned correctly, they’d have been blitzing ballrooms in the early ’70s instead of opening for Stone Temple Pilots in the early ’90s), but Redd Kross have endured and endeared because they’ve always had the best possible attitude: smarts, smiles, and total commitment to live hair-spinning showmanship.

Like fellow legendary Great American John Waters, they’ve devoted their career to making subversive entertainment in a high pop celebrity style, reintroducing in their especially golden late ’80s/early-’90s period such forbidden classic-rock tropes as melodies, harmonies, ripping musicianship, and primary colors-stuff that had (largely) been ditched in the underground rock’s post-punk, No Wave, hardcore, and sensitive-egghead scenes. Redd Kross then spent the ’90s making one great misunderstood record after another until enough shit had caked the fan that in 1997 they pretty much called it quits.

But you never quit being brothers. And so here’s the next Redd Kross album-produced and mixed by younger brother Steve earlier this year after it was mostly written by older brother Jeff in 2007-08, and recorded in that same period with the band’s current lineup, who’ve re-engaged in live performance since being lured back into action by an excitable Spanish promoter.

They’re too nice to say so themselves, but attention must be paid to this band, to this great album, Researching the Blues, which, like a pair of great pants, is tight and the perfect length. By the time you’re two minutes and 51 seconds into the second song, “Stay Away From Downtown,” and the band is breaking into the sha-la-las, you will be running around the room with your hands in the air. As the fourth song, the Brian Wilsonian “Dracula’s Daughters,” ends and the dynamic mid-’60s Beatles jingle “Meet Frankenstein” launches into its first chorus, you will be mass-texting all of your friends with the good news. By the final four songs-”The Nu Temptations” (Stooges-worthy riffs! Cowsills counter-harmonies! And more!), the “Surrender”/Noel ‘n’ Liam rockers “Choose to Play” and “Winter Blues,” and the stunning summer psychedelic power pop that is the closing “Hazel Eyes”-you will know the truth. You tried the rest-but now you’ve had the best. The McDonalds were educated at Rock ‘n’ Roll High, and they’ve stayed true to their school. Here’s to their beautiful reunion! Redd Kross Forever!

Allison esta de regreso con su nuevo album 120km/h !!

Laranja play infectiously catchy, energetic indie, on the border of becoming rock – full of raw vocals, bass hooks and pop melodies. Created from the ashes of the Birmingham scene that created Peace, Swim Deep and JAWS, they bring a new aspect to the scene, keeping the shimmering guitar effects that shaped the sounds of their Birmingham peers then adding in endless hooks, powerful vocals and driving bass, they’re not genre defining but sound like nobody else. Led by vocalist and guitarist Luke Mendonça and supported by Dave Cartwright (Bass), their varied live set has been described as electric by the few people who’ve had chance to see them, playing just a handful of shows since they’ve been together, treating only midlands audiences to their performances as of yet. Alongside a new single and accompanying cinematic video, directed by Andrew Rutter, plans are being made to take their show around the UK later this year.

2013 saw the band release their debut single ‘Lose Faith’ receiving critical acclaim from BBC radio 1 DJ Ally McCrae, writing on his personal blog “Cut from the same Midlands cloth as Jaws, Peace and Swim Deep but with even more pop shout a long moments, there’s a fist in the air feel to it, which will always, always grab my attention”.  Their follow up single ‘Sweet’ saw further radio play from Goldierocks on The British Council show The Selector, as well as receiving airtime from numerous Amazing radio DJ’s.

Working with producer Dreamtrak (Foals / Swim Deep / JAWS) and recording with Gavin Monaghan (The Editors / The Twang) at his studio The Magic Garden. They’re latest offering ‘Capitol Hill’ due to be released this summer, features an infectiously catchy riff, driving bass and eerie guitar sounds, typical of their no-frills style. The song is under 3 minuets long, jumping straight into the hook, wasting no time going into the darker verses then building back up to the riff, continuing to build to the end of the track.

‘Capitol hill’ along with its accompanying cinematic video is due for release via iTunes this summer. Plans have also been made for a concept E.P. working in collaboration with Andrew Rutter to create a short film, to be released later in the year.

Hiiiiiiii! I'm Aliya. Thank you for listening and for all your kind words. It means the world to me! 

Billy Kroener is following