White Eagle Hall Presents Redd Kross

In 1979, two school-kids all hopped-up on punk-rock started their own group in their hometown ofHawthorne, Los Angeles (birthplace of the Beach Boys) and soon found themselves opening showsfor notorious scene pioneers Black Flag. Jeff McDonald was 15, his brother Steven only 11. But thatdidn’t stop their group from becoming one of the most remarkable, enduring and unique outfits punk-rock ever belched up.

2024, then, marks Redd Kross’s 45th birthday – an important anniversary for any group whose heart pulses at 45RPM – and the brothers are celebrating the event with a veritable multimedia extravaganza. There’s a memoir, Now You’re One Of Us, due in November, author Dan Epstein telling the group’s story in the McDonalds’ unmistakable (and occasionally contrary) voices. A brilliant rockumentary, Born Innocent, directed by Andrew Reich, will premiere later in the year. Most exciting of all, a new album – an eponymous double-album, no less, packed with 18 of their sharpest,
most addictive songs yet – will hit the racks, courtesy of In The Red Records. These years of joyful service to rock’n’roll have seen Redd Kross evolve into a killer pop-rock concern, dealing in dayglo power-chords, choruses as tall as skyscrapers and a lyric sheet thick with acid couplets and arch pop-cultural references their loyal following will gobble up like quaaludes.

Tell the McDonald brothers they’ve cut their best record 45 years deep into their career, and they grin with the confidence of dudes who know they’re on a hot streak. “We grew up with industry gatekeepers telling us you’re only allowed to do what we do up to a certain age, that if you haven’t attained some certain status of success it’s time to hang up the dream,” says Steven. “But I’m still hungry and ambitious, trying to figure out what I want to say and how to say it. I give the correct amount of fucks. I’m ready to start our third act, and for it to be magnificent.”

The roots of the new album lay in their previous full-length, 2019’s Beyond The Door – or, more
accurately, the pandemic’s ethering of a planned Redd Kross world tour in support of that record. “We were bummed Beyond The Door had to die with the advent of Covid,” nods Jeff. But, as you might expect from such pop-culture mavens, for the brothers McDonald there was one silver-lining to the
gloom of the pandemic era: Peter Jackson’s documentary, The Beatles: Get Back. Like all of us, the duo pored over every frame of the limited series: every bum note and moment of brilliance, every tetchy squabble and pregnant silence. “I got very inspired by this bird’s eye-view upon their process,”says Steven. “Get Back demystified it: ‘Oh, when they’re writing a song, they sound a bit crappy too, just slugging away.’”

Suitably inspired, Steven wrote a batch of new songs in isolation and sent them over to Jeff, who was honing a clutch of his own tunes. “It was a fit of inspiration,” says Steven. “I put the fire under Jeff’s ass. He realised if he didn’t step up, I’d write the whole album myself.” Indeed, as soon as they were allowed, the brothers began convening in the bijou studio at Steven’s house and began writing a bunch more songs to join the solo tunes they’d already penned. They worked hard, yes, but the emphasis was
on fun: they’d spend most of the sessions jamming on favourites by their heroes, or watching YouTube clips of historic moments of musical brilliance (and also copious documentaries about cults),then suddenly dash out another sublime power-pop nugget in the last 20 minutes before Jeff set off for
dinner with his family. Don’t knock the process: the results speak for themselves.

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