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Royal Trux
Biography
From the noisy demise of underground kingpins P**sy Galore came two interesting bands. The first was Jon Spencer's blues deconstruction unit, the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion; the second was Neil Hagerty and Jennifer Herrema's dissonant junkie nightmare known as Royal Trux. Interestingly, both bands started out as avant-noise combos playing little that resembled traditional rock & roll. That doesn't mean the music they made was bad; it was rather a little difficult to figure out when they were really into it or simply pulling your chain. What's amazing is that after a protracted period of making harsh, nearly inaccessible records, both bands, by the mid-'90s, were making records that sounded like '70s rock, only with gobs more attitude and noise.

Early Royal Trux records (two self-titled records and Twin Infinitives) are, to say the least, extreme. Herrema and Hagerty play mostly beat-to-hell, thrift-store guitars, howl over the noise, and let a crappy little drum machine keep a beat. Both were raging junkies, and running the risk of turning this into a tabloid piece, the music sounds it. It's messy, self-indulgent, and on-the-nod, but's it's also jarring, exciting, and full of potential.