Royal Trux - Platinum Tips + Ice Cream

After promptly disappearing more than 15 years ago, when they were hailed as the “true experimental garage band” (ok, I called them that), Royal Trux are back. After a row of concerts, here comes their first album since 2002, Platinum Tips + Ice Cream. And, yes, it is a live affair, that comes up with, as Jennifer Herema and Neil Hagerty say themselves “unrehearsed, raw versions” of their former glory. Supposed hits I guess.

Talking about those hits,  some might not even remember the duo. TAhey were a band that you can list among those that deserve the title “true underground". Listening to their sound you had the impression that you were being hit by a not completely empty squashed beer can or a two-litre wine carton, dirty and cheap gems that hit you hard but not enough to either hurt you too much or injure you. They were the true 90s “gangsters of love” (Steve Miller was then a Seventies “joker”, but that’s another story).

Didn’t get them far as any wider acceptance is concerned, even Hagerty’s former pal from as raw and as experimental pranksters Pussy Galore, John Spencer and his Blues Explosion fared better. Blues was just another snapshot that fitted in as far as Trux were concerned. So, “what’s new pussycat”, if I may say? Well, first of all, Herema and Hagerty started talking to each other, after, as she put it, “they were not even in the same room” for thirteen years. In that respect, Platinum Tips + Ice Cream seems to serve as some venting of frustrations, that is supposed to completely clear the air between the two. And it sounds like… Royal Trux live, covering their favourite moments - still raw, still deep in some sort of a jazzy garage, but nothing new on the horizon.

Yet, where they will go from here, will there be more, who knows? If they do continue, new directions, aspects are probably expected, or hoped for, since after all, Royal Trux were an inventive band doing their fare in a strange garage. They can do it.