Adam's Pick of the Week: Royal Headache - High

I've been cautiously optimistic about the arrival of this long-awaited sophomore album. The standard set by their early career and debut self-titled LP was a hard one to match. Luckily most of the songs on High were written around the same time their debut was finally being released in the US, and most of High would fit right in with Royal Headache. Even the tracks that wouldn't are only set apart by their pace and slight production flourishes. To be honest those changes are welcome and so subtle that even if they were an issue, they'd be negligible. One of those welcome changes is 'Carolina,' a mid-tempo pop jam that wouldn't be too out of place on a War On Drugs album. To be clear: Royal Headache > War On Drugs, but it's nice to see them branch out a little bit!

The future of Royal Headache is, and always has been questionable. The band has claimed to break up several times, and they've even said recently that they don't know what to expect after this album's release and concurrent tour. There are a lot of people who hope that the future brings nothing but more Royal Headache albums, but even if it doesn't they've done more with two albums than most bands could do in ten.