review: Red Collar - “Welcome Home”
mp3: red collar - “american me”
new album from red collar, Welcome Home (Tiny Engines, 2012) comes out tomorrow? this week? i’ve seen durham’s red collar a few times, and they quickly became one of my favorite bands. what’s always impressed me with them is their deliberateness as well as their energy. lead singer and writer jason kutchma is careful with every word and the band is ecstatic with every chord change. they are not mesmerizing live, they are inviting. everyone joins in. their shows are incredible.
what they did well on Pilgrim was have the singalongs (“Radio On” and “Rust Belt Heart”) with the emotional narratives (“Used Guitar”).
when i review that album and think about Welcome Home, it seems to be a similar fix. The opener “Orphanage” is a medium rocker, “American Me” is the full-on pulse pounder, “Two Daughters” is surprisingly fun, “Dodge K” is probably the crowd favorite, and “American Made” takes up the niche of “Used Guitar.”
there are some ones in here that i’m not as fond of (the 80s pop-metal “Fade Into The Night” especially, but even that one gets caught in my headspace), but the more i listen to it, the more the standout tracks stand out, and i remember why i love red collar.
this is a band that is on a steady course up. you can tell they’re focused, determined. their albums last longer than one play through. they won’t get sidetracked with…whatever. yeah, the gaslight anthem comparisons are unavoidable, but that shouldn’t discount what the band is doing here. which is something amazing.
