Red Hex - Shoulda Known 7"

Red Hex are from Tacoma, which sucks. Not Tacoma, necessarily, but that their hometown basically guarantees facile, hacky comparisons to the region's past masters: Sonics/Dead Moon/Hunches/etc. (All adequate descriptive touchstones, though personally, I keep thinking "lost Yardbirds tapes".) But skip the namechecks and fuck the genealogies, because Red Hex make a noise that you will like, a noise that would have sounded good in a 1965 garage, or in a Boston dive in 1977, or in Detroit in '99, or anywhere in 1983, or right now on your turntable.

What's here is this: two songs: the A-side a headlong rusher, the backing track a blustery swing-stomp. Both bring a jaw-forward shout-sneer vocal over a SHUNKUNK guitar that sounds a little like the times you bite some aluminum out of an empty before chucking it at the wall. Surprising drum fills and moments of chorded bass, too.

"Shoulda Known" moves fast and hard, like a shoulder to your jaw and a smirk as you hit the deck. (And when the band doubles down on the main riff coming out of the solo, it's definitely a kick when you're down.) The song's a train, with track the band aims to lay across your face, and their aim is not in vain. "Down In The Dirt" circles around and taunts with hips and elbows all over, before throwing its head back and demanding an answer to one of the older questions: "WHAT DOES IT MEAN?"

In this case, the vinyl itself answers the question: what it means is, Red Hex is here. You get yourself ready, and you get yourself into it. If you don't, you're gonna get left mouth-down on the dusty floor, and it's only gonna be you who can take the blame. They told you: you shoulda known.