Royal Headache - Live In America LP

To lay my cards on the table, I never was a rabid Royal Headache fan. I only ever saw them play once and the records didn’t really click for me til after the fact. While this latest live reissue hasn’t gotten me totally misty eyed for the late 2000s/early 2010s, it does have me realising what it was I loved about the group.

As is so often the case with live recordings, the vocals sit a little lower in the mix here, taking the focus off of Shogun as the charismatic punk front person who could ACTUALLY sing and towards how inventive and tight the other three members were. Despite the surface simplicity of the songs, Shortty’s drum flourishes shine through, Joe’s bass playing is just as rock solid as I remember but more melodic, and Law’s playing feels like the rhythmic marriage of Johnny Ramone and Peter Buck.

Beyond that, you gotta respect the group’s willingness to (shall we say) turn their backs to (not just to stadium audiences…) but the expectations that their own cult following and doing slower tracks (what Shogun call’s “crowd polarising moments”) that pointed towards how earnest the rest of their catalogue was.

In an age when every punk group has to have a bit or a look, I hope the enduring legacy of RH is that you can still be earnest and sentimental even if you play music to young people with spiky hair.

-Mitch