Royal Trux : Classic or Dud ?

i like "sweet 16" but i don't really know which one i like best. i used to listen to that singles comp (well, maybe 1/3 of it) all the time, but i don't think that one qualifies.

It's a hard one.

What is Royal Trux?

Song titles and a word or two on the tracks from the Howling Hex site:

"Now, We're Gonna Sing": Start out with a straightforward introduction to the people...

"Instilled With Mem'ry": Try to forget that name and date...

"Pair Back Up Mass With": Self delusion before action...

"Activity Risks": Committee in the brain disagree...

"To His Own Front Door": In and pulled out by the outside...

"What, Man? Who Are You?!": The final confrontation of mistaken identity...

"Cast Aside The False": Ghost of JonBenet Ramsey surveys the battlefield...

"Soft Enfolding Spreads": A final objection and farewell...

This is my most anticipated release of the year.

DC has it listed as LP/CD in there news section, so I guess we'll have to wait a few more weeks to find out. But most DC stuff comes out on vinyl, as you said, and it would just strike me as odd that someone would put out three vinyl only albums, then make the next proper record CD only. I mean, DC has concrete proof people will buy Howling Hex vinyl.

I'm listening to Veterans of Disorder at this moment and I'm fucking sad that I only saw 'em live one time ('97, the Bug Jar in Rochester, NY).

(I heard that song used once over a sports highlight reel)

best rock band ever

On their sixth underproduced album and second major-label release (yet another indie band signed in Nirvana's wake), singer Jennifer Herrema works hard at sounding trashy, slurring lyrics in a raspy tone a la Nazareth. She hisses ultranasty lines like "Sweet 16 and never been clean" alongside guitarist and vocalist Neil Hagerty's own thin warble. Indulgent wah-wah guitar solos bump into disjointed drum beats.

Every song on Sweet Sixteen eventually lapses into a meandering mess, even on tunes where the Trux attempt to mimic Zeppelin's repetitive rhythms or the Allman Brothers' jams. Instead of respecting the music they bastardize, the Trux treat it as low art, approaching '70s rock like a cocky adult playing a kids' game. By mid-album, you begin to wish Lynyrd Skynyrd had crashed this recording session and kicked the Trux's pretentious asses into some sort of cohesive groove. (RS 757)

And it's not like it got better after that either.

How in the world is that record better than Thank You or Cats and Dogs? The songs aren't as good and it's more of a fucking mess. I like messes, but they'd already made messes with GREAT records like Twin Infinitives. Their trajectory at the time was that they were getting tighter -- from the third album to Cats and Dogs to Thank You. Then, all of a sudden they stopped. Why? I really don't understand what the point of that album was (and the psuedo-cryptic stuff about "it's our seventies album in our sixties/seventies/eighties album trilogy" seemed like a bunch of gibberish).