Alternative Cuts
Royal Trux - Veterans Of Disorder
Royal Trux - Veterans Of DisorderI had a slight disagreement with my very good friend Snitcher just last week regarding the uncoolness of couples in bands, the kind of ugh-factor that comes to a person's stomach (well mine anyway) when you think of the tweeness of it. She's singing, he's on guitar or whatever, their eyes meet on the high notes and solos in a recognition that the rest of us will never know…. I reckoned this was the case, he argued that so long as the music was good it didn't matter. If he'd have added the words "Royal" and "Trux" to his argument I would have had to shut my mouth immediately. Because if they weren't having sex with each other on a regular basis it would be confusing, just not right somehow.

I bought the last album "Accelerator" about a year and a half ago and listened to it a fair bit, it was kind of raspy and slack-assed Stonesy, sometimes it had anthemic moments, sometimes it sounded like they'd fished out Bob Dylan's broken harmonica from the bin and started parping on it but mostly it sounded cool and interesting in a fucked up kind of way. My brother Nigel is a bit of an obscurist with records and went looking for their first album in London where he lives now, he found it for £8, it's called "Twin Infinitives" and is apparently unlistenable, but whatever floats your boat I say. I was looking forward to this album more but I didn't buy it when it came out for some reason, I left it a few months until, again, my brother bought it and I had a listen to it first. It's more focused than the last one, the first track on it has an AC/DC style riff and the last track on it sounds like Sheryl Crow, only good on both occasions. In between there's some quality guitar muddiness in crystal clear Dobly stereo and the woman still sings like she has a turtles head going on downstairs, I liked all this. I haven't listened to it just as much as the last album even though it's better in many ways, they go flying all over the place on it in but retain a kind of cool throughout, as if they care what you think. As if.

In the end my favourite thing about this record is the picture of the couple themselves on the back of the CD, she with her lips pumped up like a inner tube for a budgie's bicycle and he with a sticking plaster stuck over the bridge of his nose, all dead eyes and methodone chic. It says to me that whatever they do they're going to suit themselves first and foremost and even if this isn't true the image is cool enough to be going on with. The music is a soundtrack to it. It's a cool record.

Rating: 8 out of 10
Reviewed by Gordon Peppard

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