Whilst dragon-chasing comic-book-heroes Royal Trux were rarely as "on
it" as people would tend to eulogize them, there was an amazing creative
friction between their pair of lovers/fighters, Neil Hagerty and Jennifer
Herrema, that meant that the Trux were as intriguing in their failures as
they were in their successes, the two rubbing against each other with a
musical incongruity that defined the band as outsider-rock evangelists
for only the truest of doped-out believers. Since the pair split, and
the band went with it, things have hardly been so rosy. Hagerty, free
from having anyone stand in his way, has released a slew of smarmy
blooze-rock records for Drag City that seem in desperate need of an
editor. And, now, four years after the divorce, Herrema has returned
with RTX, which essentially seems to be an attempted continuation of
Royal Trux, and which, in doing so, addresses issues of unintentional
self-parody. Here, Herrema hooks up with Nadav Eisenman, who, much like
Jennifer, is more a musical dreamer than pragmatist; and, so, the
third wheel to their new Trux'd-up ride is Jaimo Welch, a 22-year-old
Los Angelean who plays pretty much all the instruments herein. Like the
willful experiments that symbolized Royal Trux's astonishing Sweet
Sixteen, with Transmaniacon instruments are but tiny pieces in an
ever-evolving puzzle — sound toyed with and played with and fucked with
until it comes out the other side, fashioned into a misshapen lump
vaguely resembling some form of rudimentary rock 'n' roll, or even
glam-rock, or, even, then, some sort of bizarre evocation of
hair-metal. This gearhead-esque process of continual reinvention is, at
essence, the rockist opposite of Jack White's live-to-analog-tape
aesthetic.
On first listen, there's little to enjoy about the finished product that
RTX have arrived at, but once you get over the tepid
impersonation-of-former-successes angle, you can see this self-conscious
attempt as being an act of quixotic devotion to the rockist myth Herrema
long ago bought lock, stock, and barrel. Whilst there are still songs
here (like "Low Ass Mountain Song") deserving to be flushed down the
pop-cultural toilet, straight to the sewer, never to be smelt again
(and, like, what Royal Trux record didn't have some?), there are a few
few-and-far-between moments of saving grace, best being "Heavy Gator,"
where — amongst the references to the life and times of jailed
former-skating-hero Mark "Gator" Rogowski — Herrema's vocals, the
arpeggiated guitars, and the cutting-in-and-out drums are draped under
so much gated-reverb they sound like some obtuse, obscure take on
late-'80s hair-metal excess, with all the chops and guts pulled out and
just the sheen of studio effects left in their place. Of course, that
the album's most amazing moment is a monument to musical hollowness is
symbolic unto itself.
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