Given how much I loved Royal Headache’s first album, I put off actually listening to their follow-up for nearly six months, so scared was I that it would break the spell. A tad drastic perhaps, but the ‘difficult second album’ syndrome (perhaps we should rephrase that as ‘difficult second RECORD’ in view of some bands who barely make it through an EP before the good feeling implodes?) has burned me so many times in recent years. Naturally this curse always hits song-based pop/rock groups hardest, especially if they attain a certain level of hype or popularity, and as such, the rough, impassioned energy of RH’s debut seemed to leave the gates so wide open for a bout of “lost in the big studio / short of material / daunted by expectation = will this do?” ignominy, I almost couldn’t face it.

Finally getting round to it a month or so before compiling this list, I hit play with a heavy heart, but breathed an instant sigh of relief when the frantic, mid-fi strumming of opening track ‘My Own Fantasy’ hit. Sounds like you dodged the bullet, guys. ‘High’ may not recapture the lightning-in-a-bottle brilliance of the group’s debut, but it’s a solid follow-up, and under the circumstances, that’s as much as we really could have asked for.

More than anything, I get the feeling that this record represents RH’s vocalist, the questionably named Shogun, taking the reins as the band’s natural leader, but, on reflection, maybe that’s not such a bad thing. One of the things that made their debut stand out was the fact that he is one of the few remaining singers in an indie/punk/whatever band prepared to step outside the mumbling/monotone comfort zone and, as we say in the biz, ‘give it his all’, cutting the crap and aiming straight for Otis/Sam & Dave style perfection. That he doesn’t get within a million miles of the cheap seats of their hallowed ballpark, he’d no doubt be the first to admit, but it’s nonetheless exhilarating to hear him try, belting it out like a youthful, half-cut Bob Pollard in a “falling flat on his face and get up for more” type manner that will forever sound good when set against a backdrop of up-tempo, major chord punk rock.

It’s fair to say that there’s a fair chunk of stuff here that doesn’t quite work, with comparatively extended song times, slower tempos and questionable signifiers of ‘epicness’ all boding poorly for the future, and leading to a few tracks I’ll be happier skipping over on repeat listens. But then, late in the album, ‘Carolina’ crashes in and succeeds in actually melding those very elements into a convincing piece of Teenage Fanclub-level greatness (albeit Teenage Fanclub with a bellowing Pollard wannabe on the mic), so hey – maybe there’s water in the well yet.

It’s also fair to say that Royal Headache still sound quite a lot like The Jam in places – a tendency that oddly becomes even more noticeable as their sound begins to, uh, ‘expand’. But, hopefully I’ve now reached the stage in my life where I’m man enough to say “you know what? I really like The Jam” without shame, and in fact, I guess if you were to imagine Weller & co letting their soul-boy side run free and laying down some high energy love songs n’ shit in comparatively lo-fi conditions, you’ll have a pretty good idea of what makes ‘High’ worth a listen, despite its faults.

In-between a few slightly flat, over-cooked numbers, the best cuts here – in particular, I’d put a big shiny arrow next to ‘Need You’ – definitely pass the acid test for second album material with flying colours. That being: if I were to hear them on the radio whilst doing the washing up and had no prior knowledge of the band, I’d still be liable to kick over the chairs, jump around in a fir of ill-coordinated joy, and declare it dancing time. I know #1 to #16’s a bit of a tough fall, but second album for a band like this is always a tough call, so props to Royal Headache – they’ve made it out the other side with road ahead and the motor still running.

Listen & buy digital from the band, or check your local dealers for a hard copy.

Labels: best of 2015, Royal Headache

Well this is a nice surprise. Beyond continuing to listen to their old records a lot, I’ve remained largely unfamiliar with the recent doings of the group known as Pelt, but would have guessed that the untimely death of founding member Jack Rose a few years back might have put the kibosh on their activities for good. Not so as it turns out, and here Mike Gangloff and Patrick Best return with two new members, and one of their strongest and most satisfying records since, well… ever? For yes, extraordinary as some of their turn of the century magnum opuses remain, I’d say this one finds a happy space in the ‘career highlights’ sidebar for sure.

Essentially, Pelt’s methodology remains unchanged. Taking on the sonic ideal of LaMonte Young’s Eastern-derived minimalism and disconnecting it from the constraints of both an urban art world context and ‘official’/academic modernism, they instead drive us far, far out of town and, with the distracting background chatter of civilisation duly extinguished, direct our attention instead toward the grand expanse of the American landscape and its primeval history; that natural world which remains oddly under-hymned in contemporary US culture, even as the human aspects of rural life are flattened into direst cliché.

The central presence of stuff like Tibetan prayer bowls, Indian stringed instruments and so on in the band’s arsenal of course serves to draw a direct connection to the Eastern classical traditions that gave initially gave composers like Young a kick up the arse, but in the hands of these men their presence has never seemed gimmicky, or in any way incompatible with the notion of making music that is North American to its very core. Instead, the organic and uncontrived feel of the recordings that emerge seems to evoke a whole world of alternate possibilities, sometimes sounding like the music that might have resulted if explorers from the Indian sub-continent had somehow trekked their way across pre-colonial Georgia, tamburas in hand.

So that’s Pelt for Beginners dealt with, but returning specifically to ‘Effigy’, I won’t do these pieces a disservice by trying to describe them. Instead I’ll simply take the bait and outline the two thematic concerns that the band seem to be addressing herein. The first, as rendered on the rather beguiling cover art, is a contemplation of the mysterious animal-shaped burial mounds that dot the landscape of rural Wisconsin. The second is a requiem for their fallen comrade, as is clearly signalled by the screeching, knotty dissonance of ‘Of Jack’s Darbari’, which opens the record, and, more poignantly, by the brief, somnambulant mist of ‘The Doctor’s Nightcap’, which closes proceedings an hour or so later. The implicit connection between these two themes speaks for itself rather beautifully, and in between: mountains and stars, caverns and lake-beds, ancient dust and newly-birthed forests, and all the stuff you’d expect.

Ok, so it’s a late 2011 release I think, but I was playing this one throughout the first half of ’12, and I liked it a lot.

From February 2012:

"‘Grenzenlos’ is seven songs, all loosely themed around travel and places, and all extremely good. Building on an unapologetically rough bedrock of OD channel guitar, stand-up drumming and this-is-my-speaking-voice-what’s-the-problem-w/-that vocals, Humousexual could be said to kinda split the difference between classic pop-punk, Messthetics amateurism and C86 bounce, but really I think their chief characteristic is more that of making music entirely devoid of affectation. A rare occurrence in rock/pop music, not necessarily always a good thing, but in this case, both disarming and… what’s the word..? ‘Refreshing’, maybe? Ugh, no – makes them sound like mouthwash or something, but I can’t think of an alternative right now – you get what I mean.

There’s a Billy Bragg-esque ‘blokes singing songs about stuff that matters to them’ sorta feel to what Humousexual do, but with the earnestness and miscellaneous twattery that blights most such contemporary ‘folk songs for modern times’ singer-songwriter type ventures cannily avoided – partly through keeping the pace fast and the punk grit foregrounded, but mostly just by being funny and elegantly constructed and generous of spirit and righteous of intent and just, well, good, y’know.

It’s hard to express the extent to which I’ve grown to love the songs on this CD over the past couple of months. Playing them all several times over during a long, cold walk down the Old Kent Road in December, I wanted to clutch them to my heart in some weird gesture of brotherhood, to do *something* to try to express my solidarity with these two voices in my headphones, who seem very much to be rising above the confusion and isolation and cultural disintegration of these dark days, cutting the crap and pressing forward (politically/aesthetically/morally/musically) in the RIGHT direction.”



Another late 2011 release (in fact I think I initially picked up on it via someone’s ‘best of year’ list at the end of last year..), but still feels like a 2012 album to me. In fact, fuck it, until some other bands this good turn up, it feels like a 2013 and a 2014 album too. I hear that Shoppers have already split up, which is a colossal shame, but they certainly made their mark. Beyond all the micro-trends and reheated misanthropy and ebay 7” scrabbling and ‘ask a punk’ elitism that characterise contemporary punk rock, this feels like the future right here, roaring on past. Did you catch a glimpse?

From January 2012:

“I don’t want to become the kind of blog that falls back on overblown macho clichés when considering heavy music, but if you’ll allow me some leeway just this once, this really is the kind of racket that hands you your ass and asks you to sign for it. Terrifyingly viscous, technically accomplished, riot grrl-informed punk rock, recorded in simple ‘room sound’ style, but with the guitar amp cranked to the level of pure noise, the drummer hammering through like a rhinoceros stampede – bloody great serpentine riffs, big landslide rhythms, tons of feedbacking skree, like the ballsiest heavy rock bluster taken on some sort of unheimlich futurist joyride.

Somehow, both the write-ups of Shoppers I’ve encountered so far have concentrated on the lyrics. God knows how loud they’re listening to pick all that up, cos all I’m getting through my earphones is the occasional phrase or two – sounds like fragments of phone conversations overheard on buses, half-hearted fridge-door lovenotes and late night arguments, yelled back in the faces of their proponents with a bitterness that seems to lay bare their craven insincerity. Heavy feelings to accompany heavy music.

Weirdly, the general vibe and production reminds me of nothing so much as Napalm Death’s ‘From Enslavement to Obliteration’ – the sound of a band looking to make things as dense and unapproachable as possible for their listeners, shedding fair-weather fans in seconds. January, February, my listening always falls back on this kinda thing, and ‘Silver Year’ is hitting the spot hard.”

(Psst – you can still get a copy cheap from here.)



It’s an odd process that kicks in each time I initially check out one of these doom/drone/long form psyche type bands. It’s a form I love, but 75% of the time, they lose me immediately. Their basic way of doing business – their groove, in essence – doesn’t connect with me. I just can’t hang with it, and staying the course as they pound it into the ground for XX minutes is unlikely to prove a happy experience. Sometimes things are a bit more interesting, and I’ll give ‘em the benefit of the doubt for a while, see if it grows on me. But then, occasionally, there’s one that just hits me straight between the eyes; that sees a a readybrek glow surround me as soon as the amp noise fades in and the first slow-mo cymbals crash; that has me exclaiming FUCK YES, taking the phone off the hook, lighting the candles, and settling in for a prolonged period of immersion.

Such was the case when I first heard Bong’s extraordinary ‘Beyond Ancient Space’ in 2011. I wouldn’t have thought it possible that they could summon up a more fully realised expression of their chosen sound, and yet here we are a year later, and ‘Mana-Yood-Sushai’ (title taken from the writings of Lord Dunsany, incidentally) does the job nicely.

With a far cleaner, sharper recorded sound than they’ve gone for previously, the two pieces here reveal a more delicate and diffuse side to the band that seems to cut the umbilical cord connecting them to the world of metal almost entirely, setting the controls instead for a wholly self-defined journey in amplified, devotional psychedelia. If the album initially lacks the unified cosmic roar of ‘..Ancient Space’, the upshot is that the contributions of the individual band members, and the inspired heights of their slow motion improvisational interplay, stand out far clearer than before.

Were I writing a longer review here, I’m sure I could bore you with a poorly composed paragraph praising the contribution of each of the band’s four members, before attempting to describe the way they bring it all together… but thankfully for us all, this is just a quick end of year run-down type entry.

So essentially, let’s just say that what we’re dealing with here is four people surrendering themselves to a higher, mightier whole, lost in their own individual sounds, but circling each other all the same, working together at an almost telepathic level in the creation and nourishment of a vast, pulsing, living GROOVE, its contours etched in the listeners’ mind deeper than Saturn’s rings.

I’ve often thought there’s some sort of bullshit thesis waiting to be written on the use of heavy rock as a spiritual/meditational practice. No doubt the members of Bong are sufficiently down to earth to would laugh off such a concept, but in their heart of hearts they must know what they’re doing here, as the roar from the amps hits the air like a thousand trappists giving it their all, and whoever writes that thesis really needs to check this shit out.


This doesn’t really feel like a big, #1 Album of the Year or anything. But as I think I said in my original write-up: good songs, good sound, good performance – sometimes that’s all it takes. I've listened to this one a hundred times, and I’m about to listen to it a few more.

From June:

“Aside from anything else, it’s great to hear a white, male vocalist who sounds like he’s really fucking committed to the idea of being the vocalist in a rock band, rather than just ‘the guy who happens to sing’, delivering these Motown and Big Star informed numbers the way they need to be delivered in punk scene context – big and bellowy, but without being a preening jerk about it or anything, like a detoxed Robert Pollard giving it his best Otis Redding moves.

And as to the band, well… given the style of music they’re aiming for, I could easily see Royal Headache turning into one of those groups who record a really disappointing, over-polished follow-up album with all their vital energy drained out into some gutter behind the studio, gathered up in plastic bags by some unscrupulous sound engineer, watered down and sold back piecemeal to lethargic teenage punk bands (because that’s the kind of thing they do in studios, kids). But for the moment, on this first record, Royal Headache are just fucking ON. Personally I might not have gone with that ultra-trebley Rickenbacker guitar sound, but that’s the dude’s choice and he does good work with it, high-end distortion spreading hither on yon across the to-my-ears-perfect 8-track tape level fidelity, all musicians audible even as everything bleeds everywhere for a big, warm, band-in-a-room sound, amp noise cleaving across into the cymbals on each chorus for authentically headache-y effect.

As I say, this kind of magic rarely lasts long these days, but to all intents and purposes this Royal Headache LP is some real ‘lightning in a bottle’ shit, capturing the rush of a great band just being a great band. And that’s something that’s hard to beat, regardless of where they head in future.”

Labels: best of 2012, Bong, Humousexual, Pelt, Royal Headache, Shoppers

Royal Headache.

Given the modicum of worldwide attention they’ve accumulated, Sydney’s Royal Headache were already lurking somewhere on my ‘to listen’ list, but it was a welcome nudge from Ruan of Popical Island last month that pushed me into actually doing said listening, and I have subsequently listened to their self-titled album (released variously by XVIII Records, R.I.P. Society and What’s Yr Rupture?) a great deal.

As is the case with Melbourne compatriots Eddy Current.., Royal Headache are a great and refreshing band whose appeal is so straightforward, it’s difficult for writer-types to pen a description that doesn’t make them sound shitty. I mean, left to my own devices, I'd probably describe them as something like “no nonsense, high energy guitar pop with catchy tunes and a great singer”, but then that quote might get inadvertently picked up by someone looking for copy and printed on a sticker in a record shop (hey, don’t laugh, it’s happened), and then no one would want to listen to Royal Headache ever again, and they'd have no option but to split up in disgrace. And I wouldn’t want that to happen. With great power, etc. So, zeroing in a bit, let’s instead say that this is sort of a happy collision between yr lo-fi ozzie punk and yr Exploding Hearts/Big Star/GBV power-pop, and see where that gets us.

As is often the case with these “just the same old stuff done well” type deals, I find myself recalling Billy Childish’s watertight formula for making a good record – ‘good song, good sound, good performance’. As I get older, I find myself becoming increasingly strident in my demand that song-based rock bands fulfil these basic criteria, and increasingly quick to dismiss them when they don’t. So… hopefully it will carry some kind of weight if I simply state that Royal Headache hit their marks better than any example of this kinda music I’ve heard in a long while.

Aside from anything else, it’s great to hear a white, male vocalist who sounds like he’s really fucking committed to the idea of being the vocalist in a rock band, rather than just ‘the guy who happens to sing’, delivering these Motown and Big Star informed numbers the way they need to be delivered in punk scene context – big and bellowy, but without being a preening jerk about it or anything, like a detoxed Robert Pollard giving it his best Otis Redding moves.

And as to the band, well… given the style of music they’re aiming for, I could easily see Royal Headache turning into one of those groups who record a really disappointing, over-polished follow-up album with all their vital energy drained out into some gutter behind the studio, gathered up in plastic bags by some unscrupulous sound engineer, watered down and sold back piecemeal to lethargic teenage punk bands (because that’s the kind of thing they do in studios, kids). But for the moment, on this first record, Royal Headache are just fucking ON. Personally I might not have gone with that ultra-trebley Rickenbacker guitar sound, but that’s the dude’s choice and he does good work with it, high-end distortion spreading hither on yon across the to-my-ears-perfect 8-track tape level fidelity, all musicians audible even as everything bleeds everywhere for a big, warm, band-in-a-room sound, amp noise cleaving across into the cymbals on each chorus for authentically headache-y effect.

As I say, this kind of magic rarely lasts long these days, but to all intents and purposes this Royal Headache LP is some real ‘lightning in a bottle’ shit, capturing the rush of a great band just being a great band. And that’s something that’s hard to beat, regardless of where they head in future. As a yardstick of general good-ness, just consider the fact that they throw in about three instrumental cuts on this album, all purely of the “this is just like one of our regular songs, but we forgot to do the vocals” variety. Y’know - no solos or instro hooks or anything, just chords and bass and drums… and you won’t feel like skipping through any of them. How did they manage that?

If anything, the instrumentals just act as necessary buffers between the chest-beating rama-lama of the vocal songs, which are…. pretty damn good, on the whole. Maybe not quite world class song-writing prowess or anything, but the energy and soul of the performance gets them straight to the bullseye more often than not. There’s a few punk stompers (‘Psychotic Episode’ is a winner), and the joyously self-explanatory ‘Girls’ (destined to instigate 80 seconds of carnage at your next barbeque), but mainly they sing about love, like ye olde bands used to – being in it, not being in it, having it, not having it – y’know, the whole thing. Now I’ll admit that currently I might be more inclined toward the enjoyment of songs about, I dunno, bulldozers or ghosts or military history or something, but with the oomph of singer + band behind the material, the old “love, love, love” thing works out nicely for Royal Headache, and it’s a great time, right words hitting the right chord changes just like they need to.

So in conclusion, that’s Royal Headache folks. All round quality. If you need stuff like this in your life right now, you won’t find much better. Our vendors are waiting.

Labels: Australia, I like, Royal Headache