For a time, in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, Royal Trux were all over Melody Maker, and probably the NME, although I tended not to read the NME. An offshoot of the uber-cool Pussy Galore, they were pitched as the coolest, most louche act around, the epitome of New York not giving a fuck chic. Pre-Internet, you often had to buy a record to hear band, and I often did. Ironically, I picked up Slowdive’s ‘Inside Your Room’ EP and ‘Slouvaki’ on the back of obliterative trashings because the criticisms actually sounded like positive points, and I was proved right. Picking up the 10” for ‘You’re Gonna Lose’, I was seriously underwhelmed. Perhaps it was because it was their first major label release. Perhaps I wasn’t in the right space. But… meh.
Their untitled third album predates their singing to Virgin, and was originally released by Drag City/Domino in 1992, and reissued by Fat Possum in 2018, and encapsulates everything the music press celebrated at the time: lo-fi, scuzzy, etc. And this was noted for being more lo-fi, more scuzzy, than its predecessors.
Just as with early Pavement and Silver Jews, the vibe is anti-establishment amateurism: the sound quality is rough, as is the playing. The trouble is, the songs are only so-so in the main, and the whole album sounds like a ramshackle jam, the sound of a band in rehearsal and trying to work out where they’re going next. As an act of rebellion, it’s cool and all, but as a thing to listen to, it’s like sifting through a stack of ropey demos on a bootleg, or disc 3 of an expanded reissue which contains all the rough but not-so-ready outtakes cut in a garage or bedroom.
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Perhaps the sparsest cut on the album, the acoustic folk of ‘Junkie Nurse’ feels the most formulated and the most fully realised. ‘Sometimes’ and ‘Lightning Boxer’ feel like songs which show potential, but potential which isn’t fully realised. The latter features some wild guitar soloing, but it’s off-key, as are the vocals, and it just feels half-done.
This remastered edition is nicely timed and all the rest, but remastering an album that sounds like it was recorded on a condenser mic during a rehearsal seems like wasted energy.
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