"When he sings, it just comes out." That was Chris "Shortty" Short, drummer of soulful Sydney garage-punkers Royal Headache, expressing his own awe at the vocal stylings of his bandmate Shogun to Pitchfork's Evan Minsker. A half century past its born-on date, in the midst of yet another uptick in interest in the scuzzy stuff, and even the best of garage rock's new breed's not exactly long on surprises; the cream of this particular crop, as our Jayson Greene rightly noted a week back, "plays upon beloved memories while confusing them," but the worst of it simply seems to content itself with rehashing of somebody else's past glories. Get 20 seconds into "Never Again", opening chugger of Royal Headache's 2011 self-titled debut (just reissued in the States), and you may find yourself wondering whether you're in for another rotely rollicking, backward-facing fuzz assault. Seconds later, Shogun opens his mouth and, well, you won't be wondering that much longer.
Soul's a tough one to quantify, one of music's true know-it-when-you-hear-it propositions. But this Shogun character's got soul, no doubt about it. His voice-- warm, urgent, overloaded with feeling-- comes on like a house on fire, harkening back to the grit and grain of Faces-era Rod Stewart and Sam Cooke at the Harlem Square Club, several shades more complex and adaptable than your typical throat-shredding three-chorded truth-teller. It's a wonderfully lived-in, schtick-free, era-defying thing; along with Rod and Sam, young Roger Daltrey, Argybargy-era Glenn Tilbrook, and even Bob Pollard edge their way into the frame, but what Shogun's doing is hardly some studious reading of all these greats. As Shortty rightly claims, it just seems to come out that way, the kind of thing you just can't fake. Sure, Shogun sings the hell out of these songs, but every line's imbued with real emotion, and even when he's jamming stanzas with a couple-three too many words, his meaning's never less than crystal-clear. That, too, is soul.
Shogun's assuredly the centerpiece here, but sub him out for somebody else, and Royal Headache's songs would still stand fairly tall. For every economy-ridden post-Ramones thrasher like "Back and Forth", there's a shambolically stately, wordless breath-catcher like "Wilson Street" or a misty-eyed yearner like "Distant and Vague", which sounds for all the world like the kind of song the Beatles would've covered in their Hamburg days. These performances-- lo-fi without sloppiness, reined-in without losing their rollicking edge-- provide a rock-solid counterpoint for Shogun's hollers and croons. The whole record's got a bristling, live-in-a-room feel, and vocally, there's almost nothing in the way of harmonizing. Shogun, front-and-center on every track but the instrumental, has it covered all by himself.
Royal Headache's 26 minutes go by quickly, and while it's not all run-and-gun pacing, another ballad (or another "Wilson Street") might have helped a bit with the balance. And, as with any innovation-averse music like this, there's a rousing game of spot the influence to be played if you think you can keep up. But the inclusive, ebullient Royal Headache's simply having too much fun in the present to ever let the past get in their way. "Honey Joy"-- the highest of Royal Headache's many highs-- finds an exuberant Shogun shouting, "honey joy, honey joy, honey joy, boys," a line that, typed out, doesn't look like much of anything. But Shogun, like Brenton Wood in "The Oogum Boogum Song" or Otis Redding in "Happy Song (Dum-Dum)", manages to turn that little sliver of nonsense into a pint-hoisting, mates-toasting embrace. "It just comes out," you say? By all means, keep it coming.
