The Red Thread
Tension Pins
Badman Recording Co.
If there’s one type of contemporary music I wholeheartedly despise, it’s radio friendly pop-country. It must be the blatant lowest common denominator pandering and the desire to combine the worst elements of its parent genres that sets me off. I would describe The Red Thread as pop-country, only they draw from the Neil Youngs and Ennio Morricones while the average hit-making country group is mired in Neil Diamond and Hee Haw.
The Red Thread’s songwriting skills succeed with the extremely poppy dust kickers (“New Watch,” “Counting Stitches”), the minor key desert-at-dusk burners (“Five Below” and the instrumental “Postcards”) and the Velvets-as-cowboys halfway point (“From the Divide”). The only dud on here is the proficient but out of context drum solo, “The Dinner Party.” This band is one of the new guard (along with Rilo Kiley, Knife in the Water and others) who are thankfully keeping a small pocket of country music fresh, listenable and free of the overwrought trailer park melodrama disease most folks call “country” these days. Be thankful for that.
Badman Recording Co.: [www.badmanrecordingco.com/](http://www.badmanrecordingco.com/)
