: : Gigs - Redjetson : :

We've been dreading writing this article, and not just because this writer is notoriously inept at live reviews, nor because we are acquainted with Redjetson's singer's girlfriend, and we therefore can't be as openly abusive as usual. Rather, because there seems to be something about Redjetson which inspires the kind of flowery, adjective-heavy write-up which relies heavily on Microsoft Word's thesaurus facility, and makes comparisons with thunderstorms and aurora borealis and duck migration and Christ knows what else. Tinyvoices has no time for such indie cocksuckery. In our considerable experience, readers want to know roughly what other bands the band sounds a bit like, a few cheap jokes, and an arbitrary score out of 10, which for convenience's sake is usually eight.

This ill-advised lyricism on the reviewers' part may have something to do with the music: Redjetson, y'see, don't so much play songs as craft highly-wrought soundscapes of epic proportions, slow-burning affairs which veer between fragile, elegiac quiet bits and enormous, shit-eating rock-outs. This winning formula is showcased on their impressive debut album New General Catalogue (to be released on Drowned In Sound's label in January): all the more impressive for having been sensibly recorded in just 11 days. Mogwai are the most obvious comparison (the best kind of comparison as far as we're concerned), especially as the album contains substantial instrumental sections and, when they do kick in, the vocals are slightly muted under the various layers of guitars. The austere rock of British Sea Power and Low's delicate minimalism are also handy reference points. They also get compared to Joy Division a lot, despite sounding absolutely nothing like Joy Division, but you can kind of see why: it's that thing of immediately appearing quite bleak, but with an undercurrent of warmth and soul.

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