“This one’s called ‘Scentless Apprentice,’” announced Deven Ivy, Residual Kid’s 17-year-old singer/guitarist late Saturday afternoon on the Austin Kiddie Limits stage. The 50-year-old near the stage smiled. He remembers Nirvana.
Residual Kid’s second-generation grunge is certainly more authentic than Nickelback’s. There’s more than a whiff of the authentic surrounding this Austin trio: Ivy, and the even younger sibling duo of bassist Max Redman and drummer Ben Redman. If anyone, they recall Australian teen trio Silverchair, who in the Nineties wielded Fender Jazzmaster guitars and fuzz pedals as essentially the first adolescent grunge band.
As recent additions to the historically venerated Sire Records label, once home to the Ramones, Smiths, and Talking Heads to name a scant three, Residual Kid arrived as an adult band at an on-site festival daycare. You had to be accompanied by a child to get into this gig. Thus many in the compound were seated or lying down, which could’ve been taken as disconcerting, given that the ideal audience for the local threesome would’ve been a youthful mosh pit.
And to the tune of not particularly wholesome originals like “Vicious,” hardly Disney.
Nevertheless, it’s evident what Sire Records sire Seymour Stein sees in Residual Kid: three musicians accomplished beyond their years, writing catchy, post-Cobain rockers, all wrapped in a package that oozes teen appeal. Next time they play ACL, they’ll be on a Festival main stage.
Now if only they’d swap out “Scentless Apprentice” for “Been a Son.”
This article appears in October 2 • 2015.
