HIS LORDSHIP - Bored Animal

If Chrissie Hynde has recently picked them as permanent collaborators, well, there must be more than one good reason for it. James Walbourne has been the guitarist for the Pretenders since 2008, the same band in which Kris Sonne has played drums since 2023, but a couple of years back the two had already started exploring a path of their own, giving birth to the His Lordship project. Their self-titled debut, released in 2024, immediately put them on the map within the "alternative" circuit, but "Bored Animal" represents that kind of confirmation which is usually harder to pull off, especially when it's cranked out this quickly, barely more than a year later. Not that it takes some elaborate contraption to lay down a string of tracks as direct and concise as the ones these two musicians put together — when they hole up in the rehearsal room, they're clearly capable of churning out dozens of them without much trouble.

What's surprising, if anything, is the sheer amount of influences the duo manages to pour into it, making the final result far more complex and multifaceted than a casual listen might suggest. Once again on this second self-produced His Lordship record (Walbourne handles guitar and all vocal duties, while in their fiery live shows bass parts are entrusted to Dave Page), everything hinges on a old-school brand of garage-rock, with the ultimate points of reference being the "sonic filth" laid down over the years by Jon Spencer and Jack White. Put on "Old Romantric", and yes, that's 100% Blues Explosion, all fuzz blasts and volumes pushed well past the red line.

"Bored Animal" is a filthy, devastating, old-school record, packed with saturated sounds, where "Johnny Got No Beef" is enough to make you understand exactly why the Strokes could only have been born in New York, and "Downertown" is there to remind you that rock'n'roll always needs a certain dose of ferocity. Towards the end, the wild blast of '77-punk unleashed in "I Fly Planes Into Hurricanes" sweeps everything away, just before the instrumental "Gin And Foot" closes the record, launching into (up to that point) unforeseeable, languid Morricone-esque horizons.

But it's only a brief pause: in early January 2026 a new single arrived, "Welcome To The Island", following the same stylistic trajectory as "Bored Animal", most likely hinting (given the strikingly similar cover artwork) at the release of a deluxe edition.

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12/01/2026