Redcast, Redcast EP

A friend of mine tried to convince me once that creating good pop music is practically science. Not that you have to do A, B, and C to make a perfect pop song, but more that there are things you just don’t do if you want it to work right. There are rules to it, and while they can be bent or broken, they really shouldn’t unless you know what you’re doing. Is he right? I dunno; I’m more of a “feel” person when it comes to music, honestly — if it makes me smile, makes my heart skip a beat, makes me so melancholy I want to jump off a roof, it’s done its job. That said, I’ve found that I do have a handful of “rules” (okay, “guidelines”) that I unconsciously use to evaluate all things musical, so I guess maybe he’s got a point.

Bands like Redcast also make me re-evaluate my view of the whole “rules” thing, because whether they meant to or not, with their debut self-titled EP, they’ve made a small pile of picture-perfect, sunshiny-day pop, the soundtrack for a perfect world where the birds are singing (all in the same key, of course), you’ve got your girl by your side, there’s not a cloud in the sky, and everybody you see around you is smiling. The music’s jaunty and endearing from the start, with first track “Beside Myself” a sweet, keys-heavy, heart-on-sleeve declaration of love that brings to mind Moods for Moderns, Ultimate Fakebook, or Semisonic’s Great Divide. Which is no mean company to be in, believe me.

Redcast cruises on from there, focusing on a more retro-’80s pop sound on “Hopeless?”, where the guitars get more electrified but still remain relatively low-key, and “When You’re Falling,” a bit of melancholy, understated acoustic pop that reminds me oddly of Tom Waits’ “I Hope That I Don’t Fall In Love With You” (and not in an “oh, God — how dare they rip off Tom Waits?” way, which is a good thing). “Soap” veers very close to Barenaked Ladies territory, which isn’t somewhere you really want to be with me, personally, but even then the band pulls it off. This track’s a bit of an accomplishment, really; Redcast (band members are apparently brothers Seth, Jarrod, and Darren, but build a goofy metaphor for something (“rationality,” I guess?), then never really talks about it, instead spending the length of the song basically apologizing for the goofiness of it. And against all odds, y’know, that works just fine.

The band finishes up the EP with an amalgam of all of the above — “A Thought From You” draws in the aforementioned Ladies, Semisonic, and Ultimate Fakebook influences, melds ’em together with a heavy glob of youthful insecurity and doubt (which is definitely understandable; the three brothers look like they’re barely of drinking age in all their photos), and hangs it all on a wide-open smile so unashamed and un-cynical you can’t help but smile back. These kids may not realize it, but they’ve apparently taken that whole pop rulebook thing and grafted it onto their musical DNA. Given that, how could they not hit the mark??