Somebody gave me a cassette of this in a box of miscellaneous cassettes. I viewed it with caution and mistrust for months before really giving it a devoted listen, on the way to record some friends of mine calling themselves the Pickled Beats. It was an ego-listen at that time, as the Royal Trux album sounded like it was recorded (badly) on cassette 4‑track by stoned Martians with a jazzhead-preservation of the moment ideology. (They claim to be a HARMOLODIC band, and I believe them). Nothing that I could do to mangle the Pickled Beats sound could be worse than the Royal Trux.
But I found myself singing fragments of the (90% unintelligible) lyrics, wanting, needing, CRAVING to hear the Royal Trux again and again, all day, every day, all the time, AAAAARRRGGGHHH! Which happens to me yet, that years later every time I put them in the car stereo, I know I’m in for a week or more of desperate fixation.
The guitar hooks are overblown and distorted, but they blister with intent — even the chaos and mania is by design. Loose parameters have been defined within which floundering may occur to great effect.
Singer Jennifer Herrema is a tiny skinny blonde female who sings like a million year old man. She is scary to look at. Every time I play the Royal Trux for someone, they ask first: “That’s a woman?”
Then they go out and buy their own copies, and begin their own lifelong fixation. This band (at least on this album) is an addiction, and an inspiration, and a powerful force of nature. Their earlier recordings (which I have not had the luxury of examining in any detail) are reputed to be blatant noise for the sake of noise for the sake of art looking down it’s nose at non-art. This does not mean “bad.”
More recent albums, legend has it, follow in the vein of this one: lengthy and convoluted song structures performed economically and precisely with a maximum of sloppy din and a fantastic rubber groove. (The rhythm section makes it, provides a waveringly solid context, like walking on peat).
Pick this up somewhere and make a friend for life.