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It might not seem the most glaringly obvious candidate for canonization, but Redd Kross's major-label debut laid the blueprint for nearly every power-pop album of the post-grunge era. Its glittering blend of rag-tag '60s harmonies, subversive '70s riffage and jangling melodies yanked from the heyday of '80s college radio influenced everyone from contemporaries Jellyfish and Material Issue to new-wave power-popsters Weezer and Ultimate Fakebook.
It took brothers Jeff and Steven McDonald (the nexus of the Redd Kross universe) nearly three years to complete the follow-up to 1987's much-lauded Neurotica, making Third Eye the most hotly anticipated album of RK's career; having hitched their rising star to Atlantic's bulging money-wagon, the McDonalds were afforded all the recording studio luxuries money could buy. Critics and fanatical pundits alike foamed at the mouth in anticipation of this marvelous merger.
And what a marvelous partnership it proved to be; under the world-beating WEA umbrella, Redd Kross made some of the most sophisticatedly shimmering pop of the era. "1976" and "Shonen Knife" are suffused with a paisley grandeur that's comfortably at odds with their punk rock pedigree, and "Bubblegum Factory" is the closest they would ever come to Beatlesque perfection, while opener "The Faith Healer"'s soaring, jangle-to-strum chorus and terse snarl sounds as if it rolled out of a Poughkeepsie garage in the summer of '69. Other highlights include the breezeblock riffing of "Where I Am Today", the wistfully poignant "I Don't Know How to be Your Friend" and the bracing "Elephant Flares", which makes an ear-shattering case for its place amongst the best guitar-pop songs of the decade.
It's telling, then, that Third Eye was Redd Kross's only album for Atlantic. Those in the know wondered aloud why such a lucrative union was terminated so hastily. Only the execs know for sure, but the smart money is based on album sales. In 1990, candy-coated pop-tarts and Aqua-Netted hair metal bands ruled the charts, and it quickly became clear that the pristine pop rock and retrophonic image of Redd Kross did not appeal to fans of either pole. In fact, it wasn't until Redd Kross reappeared three years later on Mercury with the supreme Phaseshifter that they got even a smidgen of their due -- they scored a minor radio hit with the blasting pop ode "Saragon", but were essentially lost in the tsunami that was grunge-era Seattle, and toiled onward in cultish obscurity.
They were undoubtedly one of the great pop groups of their era, but Redd Kross always seemed to be in the wrong place, with the wrong sound, at the wrong time. The stunning but unjustly ignored Third Eye is ample proof of that.
-- Jason Jackowiak
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