Royal Trux - The veterans of disorder

Out of the diaspora of Pussy Galore, a cult band from the New York underground, came two groups destined to profoundly influence the history of blues-rock in the Nineties: Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and the duo Royal Trux, made up of Neil Hagerty (guitar) and his partner Jennifer Herrema (organ). Both bands distinguished themselves from the start as "avant-noise" outfits, devoted nonetheless to unearthing the most primitive roots of rock & roll.

Royal Trux's music, however, sounds more chaotic, hallucinated and extreme right from the outset: Seventies sounds reimagined through a punk lens, Sonic Youth mixed with Coldblood, tight rhythms, sketched-out melodies. A nitroglycerin blend that explodes with full virulence on their self-titled debut, Royal Trux (1988). A record that manages to combine Captain Beefheart's delirious vocal acrobatics with the depraved blues of the Rolling Stones, the psychedelic visions of Jimi Hendrix and the dissonant chaos of Sonic Youth. A repertoire that flows through the dissonant notes of tracks like “Bad Blood”, “Zero Dok”, “Esso Dame”, “Incineration”, “Andersonville”. A sonic chaos that grows ever more woozy (see “Sanction Smith”) and cacophonous (“Bits And Spurs”), reaching its peak in the jazzy instrumental “Hashish” and the noise piece “Touch”.

Having moved to San Francisco, the duo begins working on their second album, but also has to contend with serious drug addiction problems. And it's precisely out of a kind of collective heroin-fuelled hallucination that the double album Twin Infinitives (1990) is born, an ambitious and controversial record, regarded as a sort of “Trout Mask Replica of noise-rock” and built in a thoroughly amateurish way, with a typically “lo-fi” attitude. The goal: to tear apart the traditional song form through a thicket of distorted electronic sounds, Dadaist constructions and deconstructions, and frenzied rhythms. The influences are manifold, from Frank Zappa to Beefheart himself, from the Rolling Stones to Pere Ubu, from Faust to Chrome. But Royal Trux travel freely, slicing up and reassembling scraps of music and dragging them into an orgy of noise. Thus come delirious tracks like “In Chances Are The Comets In Our Future”, “Solid Gold Tooth”, “Glitterbust”. The climax of this sonic bacchanal is the long suite “Ape Oven”, with its menacing riff and languid percussion. Herrema's mad vocalizing, channeling Lydia Lunch, backs disjointed, apocalyptic tracks like “Ice Cream” or “Lick My Boots”, while “Florida Avenue Theme” is worthy of the boldest exploits of Edgard Varese.

After a period of hiatus (and detox), the New York band returns with their third album, Royal Trux (1992), which marks a turn toward a more genuine, primitive blues sound. Tracks like "Move" and "Sometimes" seem almost like a tribute to the Rolling Stones. But the chaotic side isn't missing either, as evidenced by the convulsive finale of "Sun On The Run".

The "Seventies" turn is confirmed with Cats And Dogs, which reworks blues-rock classics (from Cream to Jimi Hendrix to the Stones). Faint melodies surface, as in the litany of "Driving In That Car", or in the Lou Reed-style boogie of "Let's Get Lost" (Lou Reed). The record is also marked by a taste for dazed, disjointed nursery rhymes. Emblematic in this sense is the ballad "Spectre". Meanwhile, Royal Trux are signed by Virgin, who see them as an even more iconoclastic version of Nirvana's grunge-rock. But the New York duo's guiding light is still the Rolling Stones. And the tribute to the masters continues on Thank You (1995), with tracks of purest blues-rock like "A Night To Remember", "You're Gonna Lose" and "Ray O Vac".

Hagerty and Herrema return in 1997 with Sweet Sixteen, which even offers glimpses of glam-rock ("Morphic Resident") and progressive ("Microwave Made"), while still perpetuating the reappraisal of wild Rolling Stones blues-rock (the slow "Cold Joint") and Stooges ("10 Days 12 Nights"). Accelerator (1998), on the other hand, stands out for its particularly fevered arrangements and extremely violent sound, under the banner of the most deafening garage-rock. Veterans of Disorder (1999), a sort of ironic self-celebration by the band, revisits all of this, accentuating — if possible — the blues energy and the deconstruction of traditional rock structures. Meanwhile, Hagerty begins devoting himself to the solo project that will culminate in Neil Michael Hagerty (2001), an album in which the guitarist revisits all the cornerstones of his career in Pussy Galore and Royal Trux.

But, just when they seem on the verge of splitting up, Royal Trux resurface with Pound for pound (2000). That is, ten tracks of pure rock'n'roll. "There's no doubt that Royal Trux is a band that reinterprets rock'n'roll," explains Jennifer Herrema. "We've never denied that we draw on the tradition of American rock. Royal Trux is the sum of everything we've listened to in the past, a synthesis both of the things we've loved and the things we've hated. A lot of people, especially with 'Veterans of disorder', thought we were being ironic about the history of rock'n'roll. They were dead wrong. We're never ironic about rock'n'roll. We love rock'n'roll too much to be ironic about it. And precisely because we love it so much, I think in the end, through Royal Trux's music, it has become something else, something new that reinvents what's been done in the past..." And Pound for Pound confirms this once again: "Call Out The Lions", with its almost Arabic-sounding intro, is melodic enough, "Fire Hill" is the usual Rolling Stones-style blues, "Platinum Tips" has Jon Spencer-like rhythmic cadences. In short, the motto of the celebrated firm of Neil Hagerty & Jennifer Herrema is meant to be exactly this: "It's only rock'n roll, but I like it!" From 1974 to the 2000s.

Disbanded in 2001, the two dedicated themselves to various solo monikers and side projects of questionable relevance. In 2015 Neil Hagerty and Jennifer Herrema reunited for a couple of concerts, in Los Angeles and New York. The result, Platinum Tips + Ice Cream (2017), however, only contains dress rehearsals for the two shows, with tracks picked at random from their classic albums and even two glimpses of their original dadaism taken from Royal Trux and Twin Infinitives, "Esso Dame" and "Ice Cream", stripped of any trace of genius. The dismal sound quality completes the disaster.

The following White Stuff, on the other hand, recovers credibility, marking the band's official return to the scene (in recording terms) after the split. Alongside the well-established Stones-oriented formula (Stones) live variations on the theme that draw on nineties hip hop attitude, particularly on "Get Used To This" (thanks to a feature from Kool Keith) and "Sic Em Slow". The title track's irregular structure proves effective, as do "Year Of The Dog", "Suburban Junky Lady" and "Whooper", all tracks perfectly consistent with the band's history and its iconic rock'n'roll, able to hold their own even in a period musically unfavorable to guitar-based music. An interesting comeback, one that remains visceral while confirming all the usual traits of the Truxian world.

Contributions by Paolo Ciro ("White Stuff")

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