Country music, despite its much-maligned modern incarnation, can sometimes be exactly what the doctor ordered. Despite the evolution of contemporary country music into something that its forebears would likely be unable to recognize, there is a lot to be learned sitting under the learning tree of Woodie, Dolly, Johnny, the Everlys, and more. By no means am I an expert on the genre, but there is a special kind of feeling that I feel when I listen to this music. There’s an old saying that country music is three chords and the truth: armed with a little bit more than that, Oklahoma based punk band Red City Radio overdeliver on Paradise.
This record exemplifies the notion that punk can be shaped and molded as an artist sees fit. One moment the genre exists to allow the band to hope for what could be, as on the ultra-crisp title track Paradise, and then the next moment it allows itself to be a tool for the cheery-nihilism of the campfire banger Did You Know? It is an infinitely malleable genre. 10,000 Candles is a song that makes me truly miss live shows, with its wailing guitars and massive chorus. Love a Liar is another extremely catchy uptempo pop-punk love song, with the rest of the band sitting back in the first half of the song only to crash in the back half. The vocal harmony leading into the second half of the song is genuinely one of my favorite moments on the album. Baby of the Year is a stellar romantic groove with an absolute earworm of a hook. The video for the song, which is tons of fun in its own right, can be found here.
Edmond Girls is pure camp and fun, setting its mission statement as a melancholic party anthem up in its five seconds with the lyric “I was drinking liquor / Surprise surprise!”. The party continues with Doin’ It for Love and Apocalypse, Please: the former featuring downright delightful harmonized guitars and the latter highlighted by a sugary sweet doowop groove and accompanying harmonies. This section of the record is an absolute blast: a whiskey soaked campfire party under a starry sky.
Fremont Casino is the water on the embers, the hangover, and the sun rising: one last somber slice of Americana. It slows the record way down, pulls the instruments out of their amplifiers, and lays it all out to bare. Gutterland picks the tempo right back up: pressing on the gas one last time before the record comes to a close.
Red City Radio doesn’t do anything extraordinarily new on Paradise. There’s not a whole lot of new ground broken here. That’s not a dig, either. Sonically, the root they planted on their 2009 effort To the Sons and Daughters of Woody Guthrie still holds strong. They’ve added and built upon that foundation, but they’re recognizably still themselves. Innovation isn’t everything: evolving, improving, and saluting one’s own sound is sometimes just as important. On Paradise, Red City Radio is determined to hold on to hope, and that is exactly what we all need right now. Paradise is available now via Pure Noise Records.
