►LISTEN NOW NME.COM/ NEWMUSIC
NEW BAND OF THE WEEK
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Royal Headache Aussie rockers back from the dead to make one of the albums of the year
too, taken in by tracks like ‘Girls’ and ‘Surprise’, which melded hardcore sensibilities with a breathtakingly astute songwriting nous that recalled why The Strokes were so exceptional way back when. Here, it became obvious, was a band who had the ability to turn from o you really think our new album is OK?” being brutally ferocious to beatific in the same song, It’s not normal for an interviewer to face while also remaining 100 per cent ‘real’. such scrutiny from their subject, but then And then they went and messed it all up. “People again, Royal Headache mainman Shogun is were trying to sign us but we were just being real no normal singer. “I’ve been really confused dissociative about it,” says Shogun. “Completely unable about it,” he continues, talking about the to deal with it. I wish we had [signed] because Sydney band’s forthcoming second record, ▼ I’m still stuck in a shitty job. I just work in a call ‘High’. For what it’s worth, I tell him I think it’s ON centre. I hate it. Yeah, bollocks.” a stormer, positively drowning in garage rock NME.COM/ Needless to say, by 2013 the band had fizzled anthems. It might even be my album of the N E W M U S I C out completely, one of music’s great lost year, I add. There’s a pause. “But the first one’s NOW hopes. But now, having gently regrouped over better, you reckon? Come on…” the past year and struck a deal with What’s ►Hear an A DIY four-piece who started playing Your Rupture?, they’re back. And the new exclusive together as a reaction to Sydney’s dire scene album genuinely is great – brimming with band at the turn of the decade (“it was all dance life-affirming songs that sound both worldmixtape music and really shitty watery post-rock weary (‘Wouldn’t You Know’, which in another bands”), Royal Headache’s self-titled debut time would have been a Northern Soul staple) album is now a bona fide cult classic, salivated over and world-beating (‘Garbage’ is the nastier twin of by everybody from Hookworms and Sheer Mag to The ‘Submission’ by the Sex Pistols). Royal Headache’s past Black Keys. Critics and label reps adored the band is a headache – their future is now. ■ MATT WILKINSON
DAVID AKERMAN
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N E W M U S I CA L E X P R E S S | 20 JU NE 2015
► Sydney, Australia Parquet Courts, The Kinks ► SOCIAL royalheadache.com.au ► BUY IT NOW Album ‘High’ is out on August 21 ► SEE THEM LIVE Shogun says they’re planning to get to the UK for their debut shows here in November ► BELIEVE IT OR NOT Each member of the band goes by a nickname – alongside Shogun there’s Law (guitar), Shorty (drums) and Joe (bass) ► BASED
► FOR FANS OF
