Review Summary: Down but not out, Sydney kids ride back into town with some impressive new material.
Think your band has been through some tough times? Try this curveball on for size: a successful album release, a national tour (both as an opening act and as a headliner) and significant radio and television airplay around your native country. This, all to be stopped in its tracks to a screeching halt with the departure of one of your founding members, whose co-lead vocals assisted in establishing your sound to begin with. Tough, right?
It certainly seems a difficult obstacle, which is why it’s entirely understandable that it’s taken Sydney in-crowd kids Red Riders so long to follow up their debut record,
Replica Replica. With said founding member Adrian Deutsch out of the picture (now replaced by Vines bassist Brad Heald on guitar), the lead vocal duties now are based entirely around fellow vocalist/guitarist Alex Grigg. It’s impressive enough that the band has survived their downfall, but the plot thickens when the product of the new-look band,
Drown in Colour, is an engaging album with little flaw to be found and enough substance to warrant a new sense of interest in the band.
With the simultaneous vocal dynamics that made songs such as “Slide in Next to Me” and “In My Sleep” such addictive listens now a thing of the past,
Drown in Colour attempts to compensate for this loss by thickening the instrumentation. The vibe of the music still reeks of inner-city cool, but the expansion of the musical pallet to focus on darker, edgier sounds is a wise move, with sounds ranging from left-of-centre shoegaze pop to high octane post-punk. It’s a sound that has obvious influences worn on the sleeve, yet still integrates into something distinctive and recognisable amidst a plethora of similar bands.
On tracks such as opening one-two combination “Tomorrow/Today” and “Ordinary”, this works in their favour. The former flaunts explosive, off-kilter rhythms matched with garage rock guitar swipes and dream-pop keyboards; the latter a more subdued affair lead by a summery, distortion-soaked lick from Heald. Grigg, meanwhile, also manages to hold his own on several tracks, despite occasionally sounding paper-thin and apathetic in songs like “All Mine” and “The Beginning of the End of the Night”. Whilst these tracks occasionally become skip-worthy when approaching
Drown in Colour on a start-to-finish listen basis, such slight vocal errors are forgivable, especially given the transitions occurring in the band’s sound and Alex himself not being used to carrying entire songs on his lonesome.
Drown in Colour is an enjoyable release, one that fans will grow to like more and more with each listen. There are still things to be tweaked and rectified, but there’s no doubt we’re looking at a revitalised band with a newfound sense of purpose. Here’s hoping the best is yet to come.
