It's 18 years since the last Royal Trux album, but it might just as well be 18 months, so easily have they slipped back into their sound. OK, Neil Hegarty and Jennifer Herera have been gigging together again on and off since 2015, but even so it's quite astonishing how natural this record sounds. But then again, the Royal Trux sound was always something that sounded more like a channelling of something elemental than anything composed or contrived.
As ever, the fundamentals of sleaze rock are here: lashings of Velvets and 1970s Stones, the “no wave” sound of New York, a little bit of Cramps and Hendrix, a whole load of glam... but where all of these things are the starting point for untold thousands of poised and ultimately uninspiring indie bands, Hegarty and Herera aren't “influenced” by them, so much as able to tap into some kind of ur-rock, an essence that flows through the veins of all of the acts you hear echoing through their music.
There's a whole lot of experimentation, too: everything is tweaked and buzzed up, flanged, phased and fuzzed out, so every surface fizzes with narcotic electricity, every sound is either hyper-present or ghostly and elusive, but never anywhere in between. There are pings and twinkles that could come from Aphex Twin or Sun Ra records, yet somehow neither they nor a guest spot from vintage rap weirdo Kool Keith detract for a second from the sheer rockness of it all. The primal groove chunders on from start to end, with the duo's voices merging into one perfect androgynous archetype. It's strange to think of something so sonically and spiritually filthy as being pure, but good god this is. It's pure, it's perfect, and it's a massively welcome return.
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