Portland’s Red Dons are back with another prime slab of punk rock following up their unbelievable debut ‘Death To Idealism‘ that was released back in 2007 to rapturous applause in the underground scene and on this very website. Most second albums go through the mill somewhat but with the band’s history including members forming The Observers, Clorox Girls and more this was always going to be a release to wait for and the result is nothing other than pure brilliance.
From the off, Fake Meets Failure revs up its engines and delivers riffs to die for and sheer punk rock excellence. Land of Reason chugs straight into where Death To Idealism left us with blood and dirt, exploding bombs and very much in the hands of killers as vocalist Douglas Burns slams his political stances across his songs. The beauty of his offerings are not only edgy but melodic too as each song of the ten on offer here just cut into your ears and make you want to grab the lyric sheet just like your favourite punk and h/c records of old. 3rd track ‘Pariah‘ must have done the same thing for them as the band get mighty close to borrowing a few screaming riff solos from the likes of The Adolescents but knowing that this bands roots come from this world and they have taken it to a new level I guess they are allowed to fully get away with it. This only adds to the wonderful nostalgia of this record, it’s not often that bands in the naughties can replicate the quality songwriting of our leading punk rock predecessors but when it comes with bands such as Regulations and Career Suicide as another 2 examples of bands who touch that nerve it’s absolutely brilliant and people need to know they still exist.
One of the main stand outs on this record for me is ‘Pieces’. 5 tracks into the album and the hail of ‘Armageddon!’ starts one of the best punk rock songs ever written covering rejection, dejection, brutal truth and oppression all summed up in 3 minutes and 6 seconds. Another track on repeat in my car from this album is ‘Enemy Ears’ that kind of takes the very best of The Briefs and mashes it up with the force of Dead Kennedys for flavour but obviously written in Red Dons’ uniquely melodic and chuggy way.
Overall if you love hardcore and punk from the good old days, read Flipside and Maximum Rock and Roll for years and have been to see every touring band like us you are going to be stoked when you realise that those incredible records are still being made to this day. Make sure you don’t download it for free off some shit blog on the internet, go and support this band and buy a CD or a slab of their amazing vinyl that someone has made for you right now, you will not be disappointed.
Zac
“FAKE MEETS FAILURE” reviewed by Mgrtn of Solo Es Punk.
Posiblemente uno de los discos más esperados del momento. Una nueva entrega de los Red Dons, es siempre una buena noticia y una garantía de calidad. En esta ocasión, los de Portland, siguen en la misma línea Punk de melodías tristes y voces flipantes, que ya comenzasen con los Observers; pero hay pequeñas variaciones. En general, el disco se me antoja mas lento, detalle que no beneficia mucho a un estilo tan melancólico y que hace que el oyente pueda caer en el aburrimiento, sobre todo, manteniendo, como mantienen, la larga duración de sus temas. Por otro lado, el sonido me parece más oscuro y sucio, pero también más denso y empastado. Creo que las guitarras deberían sonar más brillantes para añadir algo de color al paisaje tan gris que pintan (más como las guitarras de The Vicious). Aunque, sí lo que buscan es crear una atmósfera más pesimista, desde luego, así lo logran con creces. No obstante, pese a los cambios, hay bastantes temas que no desentonarían en su disco anterior. Y, en líneas generales, siguen manteniendo esa magia que combina con maestría Punk agresivo y potente con agónicas melodías en blanco y negro tan bien heredada de los Wipers, y tan brillantemente adaptada. Vamos, que aunque me guste más su anterior trabajo, en éste siguen demostrando que son uno de los más grandes grupos Punk del momento.
Mgrtn.
Wer die WIPERS und ADOLESCENTS mag, findet hier neues Futter für den unersättlichen Plattenspieler. Die RED DONS aus Portland bestehen aus Mitgliedern der OBSERVERS und CLOROX GIRLS. Das hört man natürlich. Der apfel fällt nicht weit vom Stamm. Die Musik strahlt vor allem eins aus: Schönheit. Die Songs sind geprägt vom Gitarren-Punk der WIPERS, den wunderschönen Melodien und Chören des 77er-PowerPop/Punkrocks a la BRIEFS und einer immer latent mitschwingenden Melancholie. Bands wie THE VICIOUS und MASSHYSTERI aus Schweden haben uns diesen Sound ebenfalls näher gebracht. Und natürlich die IDLE HANDS aus Deutschland, denen die RED DONS hier sehr nahe kommen. Die Gitarren-Akrobatik ist beeindruckend. Wenn man morgens nach dem Aufstehen als Erstes die „Fake meets failure“ LP auflegt, dann durchzieht sofort ein angenehmer Hauch von Schönheit und Zufriedenheit den Raum. Klasse LP in 3-farbigem Siebdruckcover + Downloadcode. Micha.- (Taken By Surprise Rec. / www.mailorders.de)
Ok people I’ve been gone for some time now but I now work at a record store and should have new records to review constantly. This hot little platter serves up some new fresh tunes from Red Dons who have been turning heads and stroking shafts with their catchy punk tunes with a slew of impressive releases. This record will please those fans of Red Dons but also throw them a few curve balls, like a beautiful intelligent woman who ends up being a transvestite; she’s still hot, it’s just different now…. Anyway! Red Dons play their rockin catchy tunes but throw in some new elements. At times it gets a little surfy and the song “Pariah” sounds like it could have been an Adolescents song, at least musically. The singer’s voice continues to sound like a fine silk being slowly draped across a barely legal teenage girl’s body, not relying on the “whoas” so much this time around. Bottom line if you dug their previous material this will titillate you with familiarity and keep you interested (like your cousin you accidentally hooked up before you realized who they were and you still think about them from time to time). If you haven’t heard them, this is a great place to start.
-Davey
Death To Idealism is the best punk rock record I’ve heard this year. Sonically, it’s much like the classic So What’s Left Now by the Red Dons predecessor band The Observers. Telecasters pump trebly chords on top of pummeling drums and limber and driving, almost Rezillos-like bass lines, joined by chanty, T.S.O.L.-like vocals that drip passion. The song craft, though not breathtaking, is still good enough to count as top-notch. The record conveys its dominant theme, social alienation, not only through lyrics that lament mass consumerism, religious fundamentalism, the current political direction of the United States, and the difficulty of finding one’s place in the world. It conveys alienation also by its sound: the vocals are mixed to sound distant, and as if echoing in an empty space, and the overall tone is quite cold and clinical. No doubt this is due partly to the cheap production, but it’s there nonetheless. A perfect soundtrack to feelings of rootlessness. COID: “Walk Alone”
By now we’re all well accustomed to underground hardcore and punk bands not lasting long. One album, a couple of 7″s and a couple of tours sleeping in a van and eating nothing but cheese and bread later and they’re gone, onto the next band or, worse still, the lure of a proper job.
The Observers were one such band. Hailing from Portland, they made one great album, a couple of singles then stopped. Gutted. All is not lost, however, because in Red Dons we have a band that features Doug from The Observers and Justin from Clorex Girls doing an anthemic punk style that is similar to where the Observers left off, but somehow better and with more style and substance.
There’s a darkness here that recalls the blackened post-punk horror grooves of The Wipers, Social Unrest or later TSOL mixed with the glorious melodic rush of Naked Raygun, early Social Distortion and the snot-dribbled hardcore of the Angry Samoans or The Adolescents. In short, these are great punk rock songs played by a great punk rock band. What’s not to like? And now I’m kicking myself repeatedly in the balls for missing them when they toured through the UK this month. Sherry, you’re an idiot.
James Sherry
World-class punk rock is again brewing in PDX . The Observers (responsible for So What’s Left Now, one of the best punk records of the millennium so far) are sadly no more, but more or less the same personnel continue as Red Dons. Their debut album Death To Idealism is sonically much like The Observers. Telecasters pump trebly chords on top of pummeling drums and limber and driving, almost Rezillos-like bass lines. The lead singer and primary songwriter Douglas Burns again delivers chanty, T.S.O.L.-like vocals. This all is done with the passion of Stiff Little Fingers. The song craft isn’t quite as amazing as on So What’s Left Now, but it’s still good enough to count as top-notch. The record conveys its dominant theme, social alienation, not only through lyrics that lament mass consumerism, religious fundamentalism, the current political direction of the United States, and the difficulty of finding one’s place in the world. It conveys alienation also by its sound: the vocals are mixed to sound distant, and as if echoing in an empty space, and the overall tone is quite cold and clinical. No doubt this is due partly to the cheap production, but it’s there nonetheless. A perfect soundtrack to feelings of rootlessness.
The bottom line: If you like punk rock but are tired of revivalist punk bands, check out Red Dons. Death To Idealism is the best punk record I’ve heard this year.
“DEATH TO IDEALISM” Reviewed by Punknews.org
The Red Dons are a band born out of continuity. Though the Observers thrashed up the Oregon coast for a good part of the first half of the decade, by 2005 they were no more. Members split, new projects formed, and in the space that once was a regionally prominent but overall painfully undercelebrated punk band, there was a void.
The first layer of audio spackle to fill it came in the form of the Revisions, a radical acoustic departure from the gritty hardcore garage punk of frontman Douglas Burns’ the Observers that initially came together to play at a book reading of fellow Portlander and Clorox Girls vocalist Justin Mauer. However, without the punk bite to properly continue what the Observers had begun, the void was still left slightly exposed. Cue the inclusion of Mauer on guitar, the Revisions’ Hajjii Husayn and Rich Joachim, and a few thousand kilowatts of electricity to accompany the classically catchy yet unconventional songwriting of Burns, and the Red Dons emerged, signifying the perfect link between the slam dance-ready Observers and anything-goes-acoustic Revisions.
Without ever crossing into sugary pop-punk territory, the Red Dons put forth some of the catchiest punk rock you may ever hear. Okay, that much may be an overstatement, but keep in mind this is a band comprised of equal parts Observers, Clorox Girls and Revisions. But it’s more than just the melodies and songwriting that make the Red Dons so potent. It’s something those Pacific Northwesterners have mastered as evident in the Clorox Girls’ J’aimes les Filles and the Briefs Sex Objects and that is an album that’s not just a collection of good songs, but an amalgamation of all the elements of the art flawlessly united. While concept albums usually produce similar, but over-the-top results, the Red Dons achieve this much more subtly through visual and thematic aspects on down to a production value that is not necessarily low-budget, but intentionally creates a hallow, two-dimensional atmosphere that corresponds perfectly to the other elements of the record.
Though all outstanding, the track “Incomplete Action” seems to represent the paradigm of this effort to an absolute ‘T.’ Burns’ melodies are hauntingly catchy, even above experimental instrumentation that at one point near the 1:50 mark whirls about recklessly like the inside of a Kansas twister bound for Oz. The rise and fall chit-chat singing sounds agitated and preoccupied as he restlessly comes to terms with dying hopes. Another lively and unorthodox tune is the trenchant and varied “Independent,” which is quite literally almost half-comprised of machine-gun drum fills even as Burns is shouting out his chorus “Fascista! But thank you for the world you gave us / So what is the difference, man?” There are also more traditional numbers like the infectious wailing of “Walk Alone,” which borders on a surf feel and the not-as-catchy “This City” which seems a nod to `50s rock and roll styles with the metered rebel chronicle of a restive vagabond. The most amusing moment on Death to Idealism is the few verses in “Just Write, Romeo” when Burns appears to be channeling Joe Jack Talcum on one of his more snarky rants.
With members obligated to other, more central projects, it’s hard to get too optimistic about the future of the Red Dons. But even if this was to be their sole LP, it’s one that won’t be getting a rest from spinning well past dizziness anytime soon.
Where Portland punk band the Observers left off, Red Dons take over. Featuring previous Observers singer Doug Burns, as well as Justin Maurer from the Clorox Girls on guitar, Red Dons are the replacement that Observers fans have been craving. Featuring a style that’s both catchy and dark, not unlike that of the Wipers, Death to Idealism (the band’s first full-length) is filled with powerful themes, vibrant rhythms and classic vocals. Burns proves his simple yet dynamic songwriting ability with the melancholy themes and eerie melodies of songs like “Walk Alone” and the almost menacing “Everyday Distractions.” Sonically, the production on Death to Idealism would typically leave a lot to be desired but the distant sounding vocals and rough guitars only add to the feel of the album. Death to Idealism is a must for anyone hoping to find a modern equivalent to the classic punk of the 70s and 80s. (Deranged)
Once again, Deranged Records comes through with another thrilling neo-vintage punk rock release. RED DONS are a marvelously executed lo-fi unit that recalls the best of groups like the BUZZCOCKS and California surf/skate punk like THE ADOLESCENTS, with a healthy dash ‘77 style punk mixed in. The group, which is more or less a continuation of THE OBSERVERS (Douglas Burns is on vocals), and features Justin Maurer of CLOROX GIRLS, is particularly precise in its musicianship and steadiness. With off-kilter tempos out of the equation, the RED DONS excel in areas involving head-nodding and toe-tapping. The minimalist nature of the recording requires a bit of adjustment (x100 if the last thing you listened to was a FALL OUT BOY record), but it’s also much easier to take stock of the band’s effervescent harmonies and filthily fast drum rolls. The RED DONS leave a mark lyrically as well, as there’s an air of personal desperation and isolation to Death To Idealism, which only raises the stakes of the band’s impact. Everything old is new again, and I’m not complaining.
RED DONS “Live Performance April 22, 2007 in Montreal, Quebec @ L’Esco” (Reviewed by J.B. Staniforth)
(Photo by Nate from Toronto show)
There have been times that I’ve seen bands I’ve been truly excited about only to discover that onstage they lack the energy to inspire a reaction in the crowd. Some just lack energy in general, but others seem to have it without knowing how to impart it. However, there are also those bands who succeed in shaking me from the first chords and the initial drum rumble, those groups I find myself dancing to before the songs have even fully started. Those are, always, the best musical surprises.
Two years ago I saw Portland OR’s The Observers and experienced that rare, instantaneous rush, so when I heard that they had split up and that frontman Doug Burns and bassist Hajji were passing through town as the Red Dons, I was eager to see them again. I have the Observers LP and it’s a fine record, but over time I’d forgotten what to expect from its principal members live. It took them about ten seconds to remind me: even before the lyrics came in, I was swept up by the swift current of the rhythm. The response in my feet and hips was unconscious and instant. By the time Burns dropped his guitar, grabbed the microphone, and hopped off L’Esco’s miniscule stage into the crowd a few seconds later I was already awash with elation. Ten or so songs (including three Observers numbers) after that, it was over far too soon.
I’ve always been a sucker for a particular sound– frantic and melodic surf-influenced rock and roll in the tradition of late ’70s West coast punk rock– and it’s in the Red Dons favour that they play pretty much that. But what’s important about the Red Dons is that despite playing a style that’s arguably of one time and one place, they make the music immediate. You don’t stand in the crowd and watch them play– you feel what they’re playing, and Burns goads spectators into response with intense eye contact, constant motion, and a long microphone cord that allows him to wander far from the stage and engage people in the back (or, in some cases, wrap around and tie them up in groups). 30 years past punk rock’s year zero, none of this behaviour is novel, and I’ve seen bands turn the same thing into uninspired schtick, yet coming from Doug Burns, against the able backing of his band– particularly the fierce rhythm section– it’s electrifying. The Red Dons, like the Observers before them, actually encourage a feeling of breakdown between the audience and “the show,” leaving everyone in the crowd feeling like a participant. That feeling is the aspiration of many second-rate punk bands, but the rarity of its achievement in spite of so many lame attempts makes the Red Dons genuinely special.
Concert Reviews: The Red Dons and the Estranged in Kansas City at the Newsroom, 6/18/08.
By FLANNERY CASHILL of The Pitch Kansas City.
The Red Dons emerged from the fallout of the Clorox Girls and the Observers, two inspired and unfortunately short-lived punk bands. The Clorox Girls played the Anchor about a year ago, and the Observers played the MoMo gallery two or three years before that. A few MoMo attendees got punched in the crotch, but no matter, many of them risked the groin damage again last night, the Observers were just that good.
The Red Dons pull a few songs from the Observers’ catalog, and continue the tradition of perfect anti-hero anthems. Their songs careen between triumph and doubt, between ambitious guitars and dark, pummeling bass riffs, between whooa-oh harmonies and grim spoken prophesies. Live, the dudes go ape, flailing on their instruments and pushing their way through the crowd. When untethered from his guitar, lead singer Doug Burns thrashed audience members by the shoulders. Eye contact goes a long and unnerving way, especially in such close quarters as the Newsroom. It’s interactive and appropriately uncomfortable, like Cats.
If at first I sounded at all frustrated, forgive me. I loved last night’s show, and I’m grateful to whomever made all necessary phone calls to give the Estranged and Red Dons a place to play. I only wish that the punks would resurrect the lost art of flyering and of incessant promotion, namely because of bands like the Red Dons, whose relative obscurity baffles me. In some alternate universe, the Red Dons play all day every day on top forty radio.
Critic’s Notebook
Personal Bias: I adored the Observers, in an earnest, adolescent way. I sang along to them, loudly and terribly, and still do.
Random Detail: I always hope that Kansas City makes a good impression on touring punk bands so that they might spread the word of our hospitality. I was disappointed, then, that the band ate at Pancho’s after the show.
By the Way: I can’t help but wonder if peak oil will make touring impossible for everyone but Bruce Springsteen.