They upcycle them into the 1979 fairground fantasia of their dreams, a place where you might score the Royal Trux-branded coke mirror on the cover by winning a carnival game. Throughout White Stuff, Herrema and Hagerty treat the hallowed building blocks of classic rock-chunky riffs, rippin’ guitar solos, cowbell-clankin’ grooves-like discarded parts salvaged from the landfill. Rather than lament this state of affairs, Royal Trux again revel in it. Royal Trux’s ’90s catalog embraced the outsized mythology and sinister allure of classic rock when their indie peers sought to dismantle it they reemerge on White Stuff at a moment when guitar-based rock has been pushed to the margins in the mainstream and underground alike. But if the tenuous truce should only last long enough to yield White Stuff, the brief reconciliation was not in vain.
ROYAL TRUX WHITE STUFF SERIES
A winter North American tour was reportedly canceled on account of Herrema’s priors (but rescheduled for the spring, it seems), while a recent MOJO interview and a series of cryptic Tweets from Hagerty suggest a lingering discord. Given the messy nature of their breakup, Royal Trux’s reunion for White Stuff has been surprising and, in the end, predictably dysfunctional. Shortly after releasing their most congenial, conventional album, 2000’s Pound for Pound, the partnership collapsed, spurred in part by tough-love interventions for a relapsing Herrema. Creative and romantic partners at the time, Herrema and Hagerty belonged to no particular city or scene beyond their own self-contained upside-down universe, where sleazy rock was rendered avant-garde and vice versa. Late BBC DJ John Peel quipped that his favorite band, the Fall, were “always different, always the same.” Throughout the 1990s, Royal Trux sounded like they were always together but always unraveling, too. But as Herrema and Hagerty’s turbulent track record has shown, nothing here is ever the way it truly appears. The song so effortlessly resituates Herrema and Hagerty in their element, it seems auto-generated by an algorithm that’s learned all Royal Trux’s old tricks. Cycling through shape-shifting riffs as if trying to outfox the cops, the duo sings in perfect disharmony about playing in a rock band, touring the nation, making duty-free pit stops, and, yes, using that white stuff. On the first line of their first album together in 19 years, Jennifer Herrema and Neil Hagerty reintroduce Royal Trux with a joint affirmation: “This is the way it’s supposed to be.” You will find no habitat more natural for these longtime friends and foils than the title track of White Stuff. Perhaps their reunion is already doomed, but for the first time in almost two decades, this haywire tandem goes wild with their singularly subversive rock’n’roll.
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