Review Summary: With their eponymous debut, Reston trio RDGLDGRN have managed to create an album which, while by no means essential or life-affirming, at least does enough to invite multiple spins over an extended period of time.
Whether some people like it or not, multi-culturalism has become an intrinsic and integral part of modern Western society. The progressive ease and freedom of movement across international borders over the last hundred years has brought about an unprecedented surge in immigration, particularly from developing countries into more developed ones, leading to what has become known as the 'cultural melting pot'. This phenomenon, through which cultures miscigenate and inherit customs from one another, is readily apparent in most major Western cities, influencing all aspects of their way of life, from their food to their spending habits to their art.
A perfect example of this phenomenon is RDGLDGRN, a vowel-hating, color-loving trio of musicians from the Washington, DC suburb of Reston, Virginia. Made up of a dreadlocked Californian (guitarist Marcus Parham, AKA Red), a Romanian indie kid (singer and bass player Andrea Busuioceanu, AKA Gold) and a rapping Haitian (Pierre Desrosiers, AKA Green), the group mixes together influences from their own and any number of other cultural backgrounds to create a genuinely unique musical concoction.
It is that unique, indefinable sound - which the musicians themselves, in typically humorous fashion, have labelled 'indie go-go' - that is at the heart of the band's eponymous 2013 debut, a record which (in an age where the best guarantee of success is to sound exactly like everybody else) dares to present something truly original, thus coming across as a breath of fresh air in an otherwise increasingly stale market, and positioning its interpreters as an act to follow in the future.
Unique though it is, however, RDGLDGRN's sound centres around a very simple core formula. The majority of the songs on this album mix rapped verses with melodic, clean-sung indie-rock choruses, the whole laid over bouncy funk-rock beats and spiced up with world music elements, mostly taken from Latin American genres. The result is eminently danceable, yet also rockish enough to earn points among the rock and punk crowd, who actively helped bolster the group's first major mainstream push.
No doubt central to this embracing of an otherwise remarkably melodic-sounding group by the heavy crowd is the identity of the group's session accomplice on drums – none other than Dave Grohl, famously of Nirvana and the Foo Fighters, as well as a myriad other one-off projects. First introduced to the group via a mutual acquaintance, fellow Virginian Grohl was so taken with the trio's unique sound that he promptly and unexpectedly agreed to fill in as guest drummer for the band's first full-length album. Unsurprisingly, his presence turned out to be an enormous boon, as his bouncy, funky grooves provide the perfect driving force for the group's playful guitar work and enormous choruses. Overall, his performance is one of the album's strongest suits, to the point where, when he leaves drumming duties to an electronic beat machine on
Million Fans, the difference is markedly noticeable.
Not that Red, Gold and Green
needed the extra boost, however; as the songs on this debut demonstrably show, the group are perfectly capable of coming up with incredibly catchy, memorable tracks on their own. With outside writers chipping in on only four of the album's ten tracks (one of which another surprise celebrity accomplice, Pharrell Williams), the Reston trio are capable of coming up with an album which, though only just over thirty minutes in length, is also markedly devoid of any outright weak tracks – while also presenting a good handful of clear standouts.
In fact, the very first two songs on the album each assert themselves as a standout. Opener
I Love Lamp (possibly the happiest break-up song ever written) immediately captivates the listener with its irresistible groove and catchy, winding guitar lead, while follow-up
Doing the Most (co-written by Williams) sets a quieter, more indie-rock mood, letting mellow vocals and minimalist instrumentation drive three-quarters of the song before exploding into a fierce rapped verse for the finale. Together, the two showcase each of the two sides to the group's songwriting, serving as a good taster for what RDGLDGRN are all about.
The beauty of this album, however, is that the surprises do not end there. In fact, the very next two tracks after
Doing the Most are straight-up hip-hop tracks, further muddling the issue of what to categorise the group as, before fifth track and third standout
Lootin' In London makes that task outright impossible. Driven by an unapologetically heavy riff and complete with the album's only swear word on the chorus, it is a straight-up rap-rock track, with nods to both the incipient 80s and early 90s incarnations of the genre and the latter, more processed, commercialized turn-of-the-millennium version. This marked difference from anything else surrounding it helps the track become a (quite literal) standout, if only for the sheer mind-boggle of hearing this previously cheery indie-funk group turn into a nu-metal band for three minutes.
Aggression is, however, clearly not RDGLDGRN's bag; as the rest of the album clearly demonstrates, the only riots this group is interested in inciting are of the dancing variety. Not only is their sound consistently peppy and upbeat (reaching its apex in irresistibly danceable absolute standout
Bang Bang) but their messages also centre around feelings of positivity, determination and overcoming adversity. Green's raps, in particular, stray away from the usual subject matter of women and money, replacing mentions of guns and cars with pop culture references -
Power-Ups, in particular, combines namedrops to several retro titles with metaphorical references to items such as gold coins and mushrooms, while
Lootin' In London, shouts out both Eddie Winslow and local punk heroes Minor Threat – and witty wordplay (
'if I gave you seconds, would you save for later?') The result are far more relatable lyrics than the usual hip-hop or rap-rock standard, which align perfectly with the immensely likeable image RDGLDGRN put across on this album.
That innate likeability also helps earn the group some leniency where some of their weaker material is concerned.
Weaker, and not
weak - as noted, there is no such thing as a bad song on this album. Nor, however, do all ten tracks on the record match up to the outstanding quality of the standouts; the final two tracks, in particular, signal a slight dip in songwriting quality from what came before.
Stranger, while a very good track in its own right, repeats motifs from the two songs immediately preceding it, while
Double Dutch is not so much bad as anonymous. Even earlier in the tracklist,
All I Got Is Now already comes across as unremarkable and a little limp, sandwiched as it is between two of the album's standout tracks.
Even these weaker moments, however, never detract from what is an all-around smash hit of a debut, from a band who, at the time, seemed poised to add something truly innovative to the stale pop-rock panorama; shame, then, that in later releases RDGLDGRN have willfully eschewed the unique mixture of styles found here, in favour of a more straightforward hip-hop/EDM sound. Even still, with this eponymous debut, the Reston trio have managed to create an album which, while by no means essential or life-affirming, at least does enough to invite multiple spins over an extended period of time – which, in an age where the average pop artist's focus is on individual tracks rather than fully-rounded albums, is a feat in and of itself.
Recommended Tracks
I Love Lamp
Doing the Most
Lootin' In London
Bang Bang
