“Thank You”
from the album De Nova
2005
iTunes
Click to stream “Thank You”: Windows Media or Real Audio
They have the hair, hooks, and harmonies of their heroes, the Beatles. Now the Redwalls, a barely legal foursome from outside Chicago, have the same US label, Capitol Records. Last week, the band that began life as a high school Fab Four cover band released a raw, exuberant explosion called De Nova that in spirit, if not actual songs, owes an awful lot to the lessons learned emulating John, Paul, George, and Ringo.
“We like all the old R&B stuff too, so we just bring what influences us and what we like and try to put it towards our kind of sound,” says guitarist Andrew Langer, 21, one of the Redwalls’ three singers (sound familiar?), along with guitarist Logan Baren, 22, and his bass-playing brother Justin, 20. All three grew up together in Deerfield, Illinois. Drummer Ben Greeno, 21, joined later. “We just wanted to make a good rock ‘n’ roll record. A lot of people aren’t doing that anymore.”
According to Langer, that’s exactly what producer Rob Schnapf (Beck, Elliott Smith, Guided by Voices) encouraged the Redwalls to do, adopting a hands-off approach and allowing the band’s abundant energy to seep through the sessions.
Though an early-Beatles vibe is undeniable, the rough-and-tumble electric guitars and well-researched, if faux, Brit accents coursing through the beer-and-amphetamine rave-ups of De Nova summon a few other boozy blasts from the past, such as Humble Pie, the Faces, and their diminutive predecessors the Small Faces — you know, all those British groups infatuated with American blues and R&B.
The twist this time, however, is that the band is a bunch of young Americans trying to sound old-school English. So far, even the Brits are lapping up retro hip-shakers such as “Robinson Crusoe,” the Jam-like anti-FCC salvo “‘Falling Down,” and the Chuck-Berry-by-way-of-John-Lennon homage ‘”Rock & Roll.”
The Redwalls recently traveled to England twice in three weeks to perform, opening for Oasis (in fact, the Redwalls’ “Back Together” just might be the best song Oasis never wrote).
Even the sniffy British music paper New Musical Express has jumped on board, observing that the Redwalls “take the more conservative dadrock triptych (the Beatles, Faces, the Stones) as their blueprint but do it with such spirit that we’re tempted to write the last 35 years of musical development off here and now.” Not bad for a bunch of guys who, like their mop-topped ancestors, had humble beginnings playing covers at 2 a.m. for drunken clubgoers.
“We did a bunch of everything so that we could actually get paid to play shows,” Langer recalls on a pay phone from a tour stop in North Carolina. “No one wants to hear a bunch of 16- and 17-year-olds playing their own stuff.” ~ Jonathan Perry, Boston Globe
 The Redwalls |