Forty years ago the Brits got hold of American blues (and Johnny Cash), minus most of its cultural context, and spit it back across the ocean, giving birth to, y’know, the Byrds and stuff. These days twentysomething Americans have the entire recorded history of rock ‘n’ roll to plunder, courtesy vinyl junk shopping, carefully formatted oldies radio…and their parents. And probably their grandparents.
Mostly they seem to hear it as music, minus the tribal signatures that once separated fans of one style from another. Now it’s enough to be a fan of old rock, that’s a tribe all its own.
In which spirit Chicago’s callow Redwalls carry on with joy, skill, more joy, and rank cunning. It’s easy to play the geezer game and point to the licks they’ve appropriated, the phrases they’re quoting (consciously or not, from Shocking Blue to Television), sniffling. While that’s plenty of fun, it also misses the essential point: This is classic rock ‘n’ roll, an elastic folk process in which all that really matters are the songs.
And the Redwalls’ second album, of necessity and budget a glossier recording than their 2003 Undertow debut Universal Blues (and reprising the catchy “It’s Alright” from that release), is nothing so much as good, clean, well-played rock fun. They’re young and they wear suits and they’re on a major label and none of that matters. Your head will bob. You will be entertained. You will be rocked.
