Chances are, if you were at the Reddix-Young show at Carrollton Station Saturday, July 5, you may have been impregnated by the ghost of rock n’ roll.
Mainstream “sexy rock,” the swaggering, seductive, guitar-driven sound once popularized by acts like Led Zeppelin, Prince and others hasn’t dominated the charts in years. While it’s mostly ok in the pop realm to celebrate the Sabrina Carpenter-style of pop seductiveness, celebrating bad boys with bulges is considered à rebours and it’s a worthy argument to dissect how the #MeToo movement has shifted cultural dynamics in the music world.
But let’s face it. We miss the loud guitars and baddies and Reddix-Young, the two piece made up of Christian King (guitars, vox, dance moves) and Dylan James (drums), are giving the people what they want.
Lafayette’s Phantum Sun kicked off the night with a distorted and satisfyingly crunchy cover of Lenny Kravitz’s “I Want to Fly Away.” Their sound is grungey, fuzzed out, lush and full, a divorce from the thin or even gazey sounds of live guitar that has become very popular with the swell of indie rock. Also of note: It’s safe to say by the way the audience received the opener and Reddix-Young, rasp is back and we can once again headbang to the snarlers out there.
When Reddix-Young took the stage, King demanded the audience get the fuck out of their seats and called for all chairs to be removed from his eyesight. After launching into a cover of Foghat’s 1972 hit “I Just Wanna Make Love to You,” a rendition that sounded like Kurt Cobain swallowed Spanish Fly, King teased the audience that he was going to deliver some “solid content.” It was like time-traveling from the leather-laced lust of the ’70s to a modern era where people flirt behind screens via hearts and eggplant emojis.
King didn’t disappoint. He carries three axes with him typically and a wireless system. Like a heavy metal Moses, he parted the audience in two and shred his way down the aisle and ended up gyrating on the floor, guitar in arms. James held it down with thunderous precision, riding shotgun to the sludgy guitars and dragging the whole thing deliciously through the mud behind his dark brunette waves.
If this sounds at all enticing to you or someone you love, the band will be playing Gasa Gasa on Saturday, July 12.
