Music reviews. CD reviews. Critically hip!

Brothers Seth, Jarrod, and Darren make up this brand spanking new Portland-based band, Redcast. Think about the happiness and carefree feeling that The Beatles gave you when you first heard them.  Now take that to present day music, add an alternative pop-punk twist, and call it Redcast. Now before you jump all over me and curse me for comparing a band to the Holy Grail of music, let me explain myself. Redcast is not The Beatles, but their happy-go-lucky style of music is evocative of The Beatles and it’s also really really good.

Redcast opens their EP with Beside Myself, an endearing upbeat song detailing a boy who’s smitten for a girl of 17.  While I’m not sure the exact ages of the band members, suffice it to say they’re probably not much older than 17 themselves. The song goes on and on about how “It’s not gonna make it better, pretending we’re together, I need someone to hold!” And really, you can’t help but want it to all work out. The song has you at Hello and you’ll be hitting the back button on your player a million times to belt out its lovey-dovey lyrics again and again.

The third track When You’re Falling is reminiscent of The Plain White T’s Hey There Delilah but not quite as cliché. This song gushes about love and saving one another with the lyrics, “Look beyond your pain to me, and you’ll see… I’ve been waiting here to catch you when you land, and this dream is perfect but it’s nothing like we planned.”  And despite the utter mushiness of this song, it’s really good.

Much like every song on this 5-tracked EP, the fourth track, Soap is an incessantly catchy song that you can’t not love.  The song details the problem a young man faces with his love life and his relating it to a slippery bar of soap.  It’s really too cute for words.  The combination of piano, percussion, and Seth’s youthful word-play makes for an excellent song of frustration and love.

While we’ve all seen the 3-brothers song and dance before (ahem, Hanson!) this band has a lot of promise and I’m hoping to see a full length album from these kids soon.  I’m also hopeful that they’ll keep the sparkling lyrics and innocent song writing that makes me so glad that I got my hands on Redcast!