ROYAL CITY
Alone At The Microphone
Three-Gut
· It ain’t all sunshine and lollipops, kids. But sometimes, it’s okay.
Two years ago, Royal City’s debut, At Rush Hour The Cars, gained a rapturous but tiny world of attention by barely raising its volume above lead singer Aaron Riches’s cracked whisper. Like a hidden secret shared only with your closest friends, being in on Royal City felt like being in on something treasured and exclusive.
What was once essentially a solo project for Riches has now fleshed out into a full band, the lo-fi living room acoustic strum-along of old replaced with crystal clear amplified guitars and banjos up front and thunderous drums in the rear. If At Rush Hour The Cars was a yellowed and stained traditional solo songbook, Alone At The Microphone is its community gospel counterpart.
The songs "Dank Is The Air Of Death And Loathing" and "Blood and Faeces", charmers both, keep the Will Oldham tribute fires burning. Meanwhile "Bad Luck" and "Rum Tobacco" stretch out in the opposite extremes of bitter folk rock and minimalist aesthetics. Whereas the former ricochets across a full spectrum of guitars, single-note piano, distant banjo, and multi-tracked backing "aahs," the latter weaves its way from a purdy murmur to an impeccably messy climax apparently achieved by keeping the players in separate rooms during recording. Still, the most memorable moments are the quietest, including the sober piano ballad "And Miriam Took A Timbrel In Her Hand" and the lulling "Don’t You," the sweetest example of Riches's open-country night time yearning yet.
This sophomore album thing is supposed to be a difficult, heady affair. For Royal City, it’s just another luminously effortless kick at the can.
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