What is it about siblings in rock bands? There’s something musically cool and unified that I’ve never been able to put my finger on about the work of people who undertake rock music having come from the same parents. Is it an upbringing steeped in a common record collection and listening habits? Is it physiological? Do the tendons and muscles and structures of the limbs or bodies of siblings allow for highly similar attacks/approaches on instruments or for highly similar / complementary mechanical understandings of rhythm?
I don’t know. But ever since DEVO, I’ve noticed this. Scott and Ron Asheton in the Stooges, too, plus the Youngs in AC/DC. Heart’s Ann and Nancy Wilson. The Butler brothers in the Psychedelic Furs. The effect even shows up in not-that-great bands such as those Italian dudes whose names I forget from Stone Temple Pilots.
There’s an unmistakeable unity to the sound, almost as if one consciousness was driving two bodies. All the more remarkable in an era when we’re lucky if any single body gets an entire consciousness to itself.
So now, from the metro St. Louis area comes the pretty great Radkey, three brothers clustered around a flavor of rock that recalls in this reporter the eternal shout-alongs of The Misfits and Naked Raygun. Brought to my attention when guitarist and bandmate in San Andreas Fault Pete Machine passed it along after his bandmate, Scott Lucas (Local H, Married Men) encountered Radkey on the road during a recent Local H tour. They’ve got that one-voice-many-limbed thing going on.
RW370 