To date, Drag City’s Royal Trux reissue strategy has been more of a restock strategy, returning the band’s ’90s-era albums to record-store shelves in their original form-- no bonus tracks, no liner-note essays, no souvenir sticker sets. But more just than hip a new generation to this eternally enigmatic, eminently influential band (Deerhunter’s Monomania being just the last album to mainline their scuzz-rock steez), the fat-free reissues speak to Neil Hagerty and Jennifer Heremma’s treatment of the album as a self-contained, vacuum-sealed unit, each with its own distinct themes, theoretical approaches, sonic signatures, and supporting casts of players.
This rationale even extends to the latest-- and briefest-- entry in the campaign, 3-Song EP, which initially appeared just four months after their 1998 knockout Accelerator, and seemingly could’ve been tacked onto the recent re-release of that album. But to do so would’ve been to undermine another crucial turning point in the band’s labyrinthine course. Where Accelerator purposely compacted its arena-rock riffage into trash-canned dimensions and called attention to its production chicanery, 3-Song EP saw the Trux gearing up for its fall ’98 European tour, recruiting Drag City mascot Rian Murphy, Slint/Tortoise guitar master David Pajo, and future Mars Volta/Queens of the Stone Age drummer Jon Theodore to thicken up the band’s sound by several inches. Where Accelerator tweaked the treble and distortion to equilibrium-imbalancing extremes, 3-Song EP emphasizes the Trux’s mastery of rhythm, groove, and freak flag-flying jams.
As self-explanatory as it seems, the 3-Song EP name is a bit of an understatement-- it’s actually two songs sandwiching the most epic, colossally awesome piece of music the Trux ever attempted. In the former camp lies “Deafer Than Blind", a blissfully woozy Hagerty/Heremma duet that shares the same heady quality as the band’s exquisite 1993 single “Back to School”. (Though Hagerty’s spoken-word freestyle toward the end ultimately disrupts the reverie.) Its bookend counterpart, “Run, Shaker Life” is an amped-up, acid-rockin’ cover of an old Richie Havens folk-funk raga-- capped by a searing solo from Hagerty-- that, in light of the Woodstock legend’s recent passing, stands as an especially timely and fitting tribute to his fiery spirit. And in between lies the incomparable “United States vs. One 1974 Cadillac El Dorado Sedan", whose title provides a pretty good indication of the band's internal struggle between grandiose ambition and absurdist logic. It’s Royal Trux’s entire arsenal of avant-rock contradictions squaring off in a seven-minute battle royale: Heremma’s hoarse-throat psycho-babble vs. Hagerty’s plainspoken streetwise spiel (which includes arguably the first ever reference in song to the "threat of the internet"), Zeppelin-grade blooze riffage vs. ear-piercing synth frequencies, lighter-waving chorus hooks vs. nonsensical lyrics (“You’re living in the fabled land of Nod!”), steady in-the-pocket basslines vs. destabilizing, multi-tracked vocal miasma. Royal Trux would go on to title their next album Veterans of Disorder; with this track alone, they earned a sleeve’s worth of stripes.
