ROYAL TRUX

Quantum Entanglement

FAT POSSUM 9/10

First career-spanning comp for the veterans of disorder

Surely there exists an alternate reality in which Royal Trux fill arenas and The Black Keys are forever crawling back from the edge of oblivion with a good many of their teeth missing. After all, there really isn’t an insurmountable gulf between that more famous duo’s brand of raunch’n’roll and rawer blasts of RTX fury such as “I’m Ready” and “Sunshine And Grease”, two prime products of Neil Hagerty and Jennifer Herema’s recently revived 32-year-old musical partnership. They’re also two of the many highlights on a careerspanning compilation that follows on the heels of White Stuff, their gloriously ramshackle reunion album for Fat Possum, and an EP of inspired remixes by Ariel Pink. The 13 songs culled from Royal Trux’s tenures for Drag City and Virgin (plus White Stuff ’s title track) do more than confirm they deserve a larger sliver of the Keys’ fanbase. Bludgeoning rock clichés with gleeful abandon through the late ’80s and ’90s, Royal Trux somehow became a fantastic simulation of prime Stones: for proof, consider the quintessential Jagger/richards drug dirge “Junkie Nurse”, the scrappy Some Girls-y “The Flag” or even the recent “White Stuff”, which is “Shattered” if it were really shattered into jagged little pieces. Like everything else here, it may be messy but it gets the job done. Extras: None.