| Sounds Like | there's going to be a fire.
Booking and contact info: beth@redcollarmusic.com.
Management: Patrick Shillenn at The Syndicate
Press: Amanda Pitts at Cobra Camanda Publicity
Punknews.org. Pilgrim review by Bryne. June 2009
This new full-length from Red Collar, Pilgrim is really hard to pin down. It was described to me as Fugazi meets the Hold Steady, a strange pairing if there ever was one. Listening to it though, it’s obvious why those comparisons were made. The super-angular guitar parts in a lot of the songs are straight out of the Fugazi playbook, and some of the more grandiose moments here certainly wouldn’t sound odd with Craig Finn crooning over them. Pilgrim is quite honestly one of the most original records that have crossed these ears in quite a while.
KEXP.org / Seattle, WA. By Brian Cullen. May 2009.
Durham North Carolina’s Red Collar is a self-proclaimed throw back to the early 90’s Dischord era of straight ahead DIY rock n roll for the masses. While the masses may not be all that massive just yet (a quick check of the band’s blog sees members enthusiastically describing 10 fan shows a success), by all accounts the numbers are growing. In a lot of ways a band like Red Collar must attract new fans inch by inch, fan by head-nodding fan. So earnest in their delivery of the live performance, Red Collar is making noise on the scene with a sincerity for rock n roll that conjures images of broken down vans and sleeping on floors. The follow up to their roughly recorded Hands Up EP of two years ago, 2009’s self-released Pilgrim, is measurably more refined than its predecessor. Produced by Brian Paulson (Beck, Wilco, Superchunk) this new offering is a more mature attempt to harness the potency of a live Red Collar experience.
PLAYBACK:stl. / St. Louis, MO. Pilgrim review by Mike Rengel. June 2009
Don’t underestimate Red Collar. Like the guy at the bar dressed in flannel, oil-stained jeans and a battered cap who turns out to be able to effortlessly quote Sartre and Vonnegut, or that calculus-flipping janitor freak in Good Will Hunting, an initially unassuming front masks a pounding heart and fierce intellect. You can’t quite tell what this music is more indebted to: noisy, clangy indie fare, standard bar band rock or Clash-inspired bandit punk. They’ve got the thrash and manic energy of early Idlewild propelling a Piedmont bar band as well as the strains of mid-Atlantic rock without being Southern rock.
The Decider / Austin, TX. June 2009.
Its name may be Red Collar, but the North Carolina band’s ethos actually falls somewhere between blue- and white-collar: Its workingman’s anthems come couched in a grad student’s appreciation for vintage Dischord post-punk, and the recent Pilgrim sounds even more manicured, adding programmed beats and acoustic guitars to the group’s usual rough-and-ready mix. But those 9-to-5 laments never change (on “The Commuter,” lead shouter Jason Kutchma distills the daily struggle to keep “a job that pays for the garage / for the car that picks up the kid / that watches the kid while I work this job”), and Red Collar still channels those frustrations into a frenetic live show that’s both urgent call-to-arms and hands-in-the-air catharsis.
U-Weekly / Columbus, OH. By Reyan Ali. May 2009.
Whether it’s intentional or otherwise, there’s an undeniable feeling of hard-earned sincerity to the music of Red Collar-as if the Durham, North Carolina quartet scraped out every emotional resource they could muster and poured it into their stirring modern Americana. Aided by tints of punk, their gritty, earthy rock is rooted in an impalpable sense of longing and a riotous sense of sincerity to the trade’s cross-country. They are young and you have likely never heard of them, yes, but give them time to grow and they carve a worthy niche of their own
Austinist.com / Austin, TX. By Adi Anand. June 2009.
Red Collar’s brand of spirited rock ‘n’ roll contains plenty of crunching riffs and memorable hooks but the anthemic chant-alongs, freewheeling chorus’, and plentiful woh-oh-oh vocal stylings are the highlights of these bolts of energy. In fact, the vocal interplay is quite exhilarating all through and supplemented by everyday lyrical content that should speak to most stuck in the 8-5 regime.
The Independent Weekly / Chapel Hill, NC. Pilgrim review by Spencer Griffith. March 2009
Stocked with highlights, Pilgrim—a dynamic departure that shows Red Collar is as capable of measured albums as it is explosive shows—counts as a triumph. Each of the eight new songs match the high caliber of the Hands Up holdovers. Long-awaited in the Triangle, this top-notch beginning should earn Red Collar some acclaim elsewhere when the band hits the road full-time this week
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