CD Review: The Red Core

There’s something almost unnervingly familiar about The Red Core, the second album from Kingston indie rockers Hide and Shine. Not that their ringing guitar-bass-drums attack or winningly melodic songs bear any blatantly obvious influences—though the late-period Replacements, who once worked with The Red Core producer Matt Wallace, could certainly be considered distant cousins. But the band’s sound is so marvelously timeless, and the craft and confidence of tracks like “Look Terrified,” “Heaven on Sunday,” and “Untitled Paradise” so impressive, you may find yourself wondering if you saw these guys back in the mid-’80s at some club gig, sandwiched between Beat Rodeo and the Del-Fuegos. Or maybe you saw them opening for Radiohead on The Bends tour? Or at Coachella in the early ’00s with Wilco and Snow Patrol? You didn’t; but as The Red Core attests, Hide and Shine could have easily held their own with any of them, had they actually existed at the time.