Written by John Payne
Their first long-player in 18 years thrusts infamous alterna-rock outlaws Royal Trux back into the public eye, and hey, it’s not exactly like they never left. No, their new White Stuff album (Fat Possum) is chockfulla the kind of ear-druggy surprises we’ve missed from these badass brutes in the intervening years, and the good news is they haven’t stopped evolving (didn’t say “maturing,” let’s not get carried away). Fronted by Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor—a.k.a. singer-Moog/ guitar/melodica tooter Jennifer Herrema and guitarist-vocalist Neil Hagerty—the iconic band now bring an updated, heavily head-banging and wickedly weird Trux to the table, and we’ve just got to deal with it on their terms.
For Trux, it couldn’t have been easy picking up where they left off and having a go again in 2018. Or was it?
“Well, yes and no,” says Herrema. “When Neil and I started playing together [live] again two and half years ago, it was as if time had stopped, like, ‘Oh, here we are,’ and everything was great. But when it came to recording new material in the studio, it was more complicated, because in the past Neil and I had always lived and worked together, so we could just banter back and forth.”
The exigencies of modern so-called life determined that White Stuff would have to be created largely via long-distance communication, along with studio time spent together in beautiful downtown Burbank, CA.
“Now it was more like emailing stuff to each other, because Neil lives in Denver [Herrema is based in SoCal], and we had people guest-playing on the album who flew in for the sessions,” Herrema says. “And instead of Neil and I recording and producing it like we always do, we …
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Author: High Times / High Times
