Wild Things
- Issue #171 (May '98) | Interviews
- By: Louise Gray | Featuring: Royal Trux
- Printable version
So you thought Royal Trux were a pair of strung-out rock 'n' roll junkes? Wise up. From their remote Virginia ranch, avant garage's First Couple are astutely playing the media and the stock market. Words: Louise Gray
Much has been written on the spectacle of rock 'n roll, less on its spectacular couple. Sid 'n' Nancy, Kurt 'n' Courtney, maybe (once) Neil 'n' Jennifer. The first pairing resurrects carney voyeurism (buy your ticket, watch the show); the second a more complex form of freakshow in which it's just possible - especially if smack is involved - that the protagonists exist on some finite fuse. That this may be the(ir) last time - and isn't that sexy?
Undoubtably, there have been some who watched the progress of Royal Trux through the frisson haze added by such studied ghoulishness. Formed in Chicago in 1987 by vocalist Jennifer Herrema and, from the ruins of Pussy Galore, guitarist Neil Hagerty, Royal Trux's early output exuded the very finitude that makes people listen. It was lo-fi madness, drawing such approving appellations as "primitive... futuristic... an avant garde mess-thetic". The haphazard, crazed feedback and dissonances of their first self-titled album (1988,Royal Records) and its successor, Twin Infinitives (Drag City), provoked comparisons with Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica and early Zappa, although it's difficult to talk about the records' musical intention in quite the same way. They contained more references to disposable culture and B-movie sci-fi than anything in The Ramones or Cramps combined, others suggested the music was a product of 'a bad trip to the pharmacy'. The truth is probably somewhere in-between. A long time ago. Herrema, speaking in London from behind a sight-impairing fringe, is impatient on this point. "That's just one little tiny piece of what makes us what we are. It's not the whole picture, but then" - a concession - "it's easy to write about."
In one sense, there is no whole picture of Royal Trux, just a series of oscillations between positions, of spaces between points. On a practical level, for the purposes if this interview, the whole picture of Trux is kept in abeyance. Herrema speaks in London; Hagerty, who is afraid of flying and will travel to Europe for the group's forthcoming tour only by ocean liner, communicates from their Virginia ranch via fax. But this constant motion between points, real and abstract, is a wilful state of affairs, a point at which their latest (and seventh) album presses home with more subtlety than its driving rock momentum often suggests. Accelerator revels in its rough, garage sound; it's a creation that's utterly devoid of any concession to neatness. The boundaries to the songs are ragged, so too the sly-eyed vocals, the feral harmonies. Apart from the constancy afforded by its two lead characters, the musicians are a pick-up group. At times, Accelerator is as opaque as The Residents, as backwoods as Palace Brothers (it's probably no coincidence that Will Oldham's younger brother Paul is a Trux techie), is as raucous as The Stooges. Liberating stuff. It's as close to anti-product as any marketed record can be. Small wonder that Neil Hagerty and Jennifer Herrema live in the wilds of Virginia, surrounded by survivalists, where the neighbours can't hear them. There they record their group; feed dog food to the foxes; and play the stock market with the residue of the 1.3 million dollar pay-off Virgin Records gave them after their 1997 Sweet Sixteen album. The Royal couple do surprisingly well, investing in casino and entertainment conglomerates such as Harrah's. They also have a gun.
Undoubtably, there have been some who watched the progress of Royal Trux through the frisson haze added by such studied ghoulishness. Formed in Chicago in 1987 by vocalist Jennifer Herrema and, from the ruins of Pussy Galore, guitarist Neil Hagerty, Royal Trux's early output exuded the very finitude that makes people listen. It was lo-fi madness, drawing such approving appellations as "primitive... futuristic... an avant garde mess-thetic". The haphazard, crazed feedback and dissonances of their first self-titled album (1988,Royal Records) and its successor, Twin Infinitives (Drag City), provoked comparisons with Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica and early Zappa, although it's difficult to talk about the records' musical intention in quite the same way. They contained more references to disposable culture and B-movie sci-fi than anything in The Ramones or Cramps combined, others suggested the music was a product of 'a bad trip to the pharmacy'. The truth is probably somewhere in-between. A long time ago. Herrema, speaking in London from behind a sight-impairing fringe, is impatient on this point. "That's just one little tiny piece of what makes us what we are. It's not the whole picture, but then" - a concession - "it's easy to write about."
In one sense, there is no whole picture of Royal Trux, just a series of oscillations between positions, of spaces between points. On a practical level, for the purposes if this interview, the whole picture of Trux is kept in abeyance. Herrema speaks in London; Hagerty, who is afraid of flying and will travel to Europe for the group's forthcoming tour only by ocean liner, communicates from their Virginia ranch via fax. But this constant motion between points, real and abstract, is a wilful state of affairs, a point at which their latest (and seventh) album presses home with more subtlety than its driving rock momentum often suggests. Accelerator revels in its rough, garage sound; it's a creation that's utterly devoid of any concession to neatness. The boundaries to the songs are ragged, so too the sly-eyed vocals, the feral harmonies. Apart from the constancy afforded by its two lead characters, the musicians are a pick-up group. At times, Accelerator is as opaque as The Residents, as backwoods as Palace Brothers (it's probably no coincidence that Will Oldham's younger brother Paul is a Trux techie), is as raucous as The Stooges. Liberating stuff. It's as close to anti-product as any marketed record can be. Small wonder that Neil Hagerty and Jennifer Herrema live in the wilds of Virginia, surrounded by survivalists, where the neighbours can't hear them. There they record their group; feed dog food to the foxes; and play the stock market with the residue of the 1.3 million dollar pay-off Virgin Records gave them after their 1997 Sweet Sixteen album. The Royal couple do surprisingly well, investing in casino and entertainment conglomerates such as Harrah's. They also have a gun.