`My faith is in the spectre, and there it shall remain.”
Apparitions drift through the music of Jennifer Herrema and Neil Hagerty, otherwise known as Royal Trux. Distorted guitars ripple and corrode, pianos plink and echo into a cavern, out-of-it voices turn multi-syllable words into molasses.
“Cats and Dogs” (Drag City), the duo’s cauterizing new album, takes the corpse of the Rolling Stones’ “Sticky Fingers,” hitches it to the back bumper of a rusty station wagon with bad shocks, and clatters down the highway. It’s the sound of the Stones’ “Moonlight Mile” and “Sister Cocaine” without the weight and expectation of stardom, so only the heavy-lidded dread remains.
Royal Trux will perform as part of a multi-act showcase for the local Drag City label July 29-31 at Lounge Ax (see the Home Front column on page 6 for more details). The group is entering an unusually high-profile period, including a recent series of second stage appearances at Lollapalooza. But Herrema is mildly amused by a journalist’s description of “Cats and Dogs” as perhaps Royal Trux’s most coherent and accessible album.
“It depends on what your perception of coherence is,” she says. “The one difference was we brought in a live band to record, so we were locked into some semblance of time, a few weeks, in order to accommodate other people’s needs. If it was just me and Neil, it could’ve easily been drawn out to a year.”
That was the case with the notorious “Twin Infinitives,” a 1990 double album that was, depending on your perspective, ground-breaking or impenetrable, or perhaps a little of both-a mulch of warped guitars, primitive synthesizers, tape loops and muffled voices.
“That album went through a lot of phases to get where it was,” Herrema says. “Like the (side-long) `(edge of the) Ape Oven’ was actually like five chapters, five songs, edited into one. Neil might give a different answer, but when I was in the middle of doing it, I saw this grand rock ‘n’ roll album. I was thinking Blue Oyster Cult. I thought it would be impossible for anyone not to get it.”
It’s that outsider perspective that makes Royal Trux so intriguing. They start off trying be a great, grand rock band like the ’70s icons they grew up listening to, but are too warped to even come close.
Royal Trux’s self-titled debut, recently reissued on CD by Drag City, includes an inner-sleeve photograph that gives a chilling twist to the phallic imagery of rock: a big-city skyscaper as hypodermic needle.
Herrema says the duo’s long bout with heroin addiction was frequently misrepresented: “The idea of a different consciousness should be emphasized, not the drug itself.”
Now clean, she says that “This is the biggest trip ever. This is the big drug. When you live the largest portion of your life with an outside substance, then you take it away, it brings on a whole other set of (expletive).
“I enjoyed making (`Cats and Dogs’) that way. I became more aware of the pain involved. It was a little more extreme. What it’s about sometimes is just kind of bearing it.”
Royal Trux is descended from the Washington, D.C., slop-core band Pussy Galore, in which Hagerty was the guitarist. Pussy Galore’s resume includes a song-by-song desecration of the Stones’ “Exile on Main Street.” That aesthetic has been significantly expanded by Royal Trux, with Herrema’s de-
meanor, dress and haunted stage presence embodying the group’s sound, if not also its lifestyle. Bangs obscuring her eyes, blond hair falling past her shoulders, Herrema resorts to wool caps and parkas to obscure her features even more, until there’s only a voice oozing out of the shadows.
“I grew up (in D.C.) watching all these rock bands, and realized it’s not just the clothes, it’s a way of being,” she says. “It’s who you are, it’s a continuity. How you think, how you feel, what you say, how you act-it’s a chain. I’d get lost if I sectioned things off.”
Yet on the eve of the Lollapalooza gig, and preparing for a three-night stand at Lounge Ax, Herrema clearly welcomed the scrutiny of new initiates, even those who might not immediately embrace Royal Trux’s wayward rock-blues.
“What more could you ask for?” she says. “Thousands and thousands of ears. Lollapalooza will be the biggest audience we’ll have ever played for, and that’s very cool with me.”
– Pete Townshend helped define rock in the decade during which it flourished, but not for the reasons many of his fans, or even Townshend himself, might think. For my money, Townshend never surpassed the three-minute glory he offered in the early singles compiled on The Who’s “Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy.” Yet Townshend’s fame is primarily founded on rock operas like “Tommy” and “Quadrophenia,” which seem bloated and unwieldy compared with the concise power of, say, “Can’t Explain.”
Townshend’s post-Who solo career has been a litany of concept works, including the recent “PsychoDerelict,” presented in its entirety last week at Arie Crown. Before the show, Townshend acknowledged that “A great song is what life is about-it jigsaws into life in a great way. And if you can write hit songs, there’s nothing else that you need. But I’ve always needed that context, that slightly richer vein in which to write a song. For me going back to `Tommy’ and taking it to Broadway (this year) was about trying to find some space for me to grow.”
On “PscyhoDerelict,” the concept overwhelms the music. Three actors, instead of Townshend and the band, commanded the stage, and their dialogue made explicit the message in the music-not necessarily a good idea. The actor playing fictional rock star Ray High pines for the rock idealism of the early ’70s and suggests that ideal is still worth pursuing.
“Some of the mock heroism that’s carried in ’60s and ’70s rock has actually been a dignifying thing for young men,” Townshend says. “So for me, part of the job of `PsychoDerelict’ is to honor that. Not to say I can still do it, because I can’t, but to look at how it used to be done. . . .
“When we played Philadelphia the other day, I was just emotionally shattered,” because “PsychoDerelict” “is about age, about being too old to do this stuff. But I got about halfway though the show and the music raised me up. Music does create life. What’s written underneath `PsychoDerelict’ is that understanding. What happens when you pursue a musical idea is that it starts to feed and enliven you.”
It’s surprising then that Townshend didn’t trust the music more in presenting “PsychoDerelict.” The most potent musical messages are usually those that the listeners discover themselves.
