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Thursday, November 10

Dig this cold joint: Royal Trux "Singles, Live, Unreleased" returns to the world with a Pitchfork 8.2


Talk about a moment in time! I can remember these heydays....so grimey and beautiful as they once were. Now, bestowed upon YOU, the kind folks at Drag City re-released Singles, Live, Unreleased - the 3xLP behemoth that is/was Royal Trux. Over 10 years ago, this was thrust onto the world, then it vanished...until now, and even Pitchfork noticed the coming of this new dawn thusly - and check out the who's-who of those that cite Heremma/Hagerty as an influence!

"Throughout their 12-year run (from 1988 to 2000), Royal Trux took a chop-shop approach to pop history, deconstructing their favorite FM-radio icons-- in particular, Mick Taylor-era Rolling Stones-- and reassembling the scrap metal and wires into heaving junkyard jalopies, with the hoarse-voiced but imposingly beautiful Herrema serving as the hood ornament who could sell their mutant custom jobs as classic rock.

Given their amorphous aesthetic-- which yielded works as incongruous as 1990's byzantine bricolage Twin Infinitives, 1995's biker-bar boogie-fest Thank You, and 2000's ghetto-blasted breakdance-athon Radio Video EP-- there is no truly definitive Royal Trux album, a fact reflected by the band's myriad contemporary admirers, who range from Bradford Cox, Liars, and the Kills to Bat for Lashes, Hot Chip, and MGMT. As a 3xLP collection of the band's early-90s ephemera, Singles, Live, Unreleased may not seem like the most logical entry point into the Trux's phantasmagoric universe. But for newcomers, it's the stand-alone release that provides the best big-picture perspective of Royal Trux's see-saw relationship with rock music and the avant-garde."

Juicy, Juicy, Juice!
(Detail from Twin Infinitives LP gatefold)

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