christophlr

reallyreallyreallytrying:

Royal Headache - Down The Lane

Look, I don’t wanna be some trite fucking asshole that tries to tell you that “great music can move you” or that rock & roll was in some sort of dire state and needed saving, because if you ask me, that implies that all of the bands that you like are terrible and guilty of some sort of vandalism of our culture at large. I hate that! That is an offensive attitude and it is only ever trotted out by terrible music reviewers who have “discovered” some new band that they judge to be worthy of their adjectives and who even knows what they ACTUALLY think. “When I listened to this album it really shone in comparison to the Vaccines’ album and the new Skrillex EP, all of which I listened to because I was serviced review copies by their record labels. Seminal. Saviour of guitar music. Four stars.” No. Fuck that! Sincerely, fuck that. What I am getting to, and incidentally I know that that was a very long way of saying I know this is self-indulgent and I’m sorry but I feel very strongly about this, is that this weekend I was given a copy of the debut album by Royal Headache and, I don’t know, everything is different? I’m being serious. It’s not funny. I listen to a lot of music! I listen to new music almost every day, because that’s what you need to do when you are trying to maintain an MP3 blog. I listen to music when I’m on the train so I don’t get bored and maybe at some point music stopped I forgot that listening to a record can be an event instead of a distraction? That might be overstating it a little, because it’s not like I didn’t enjoy it music. I did! But I maybe didn’t enjoy it as much as I’ve enjoyed this Royal Headache album in the two days I’ve had it. It’s a very good record! It’s loose and exuberant and full of melody and emotional without being flowery and relatable but not mundane. You know, music is supposed to be this transcendental thing and it’s supposed to be evocative or whatever, and it seems to me that we all spend a lot of time trying to make the music we listen to fit that description because we want to be transported but also because we feel like we SHOULD be transported or we’re not experiencing it properly. The thing is, though, that most musicians aren’t capable of greatness. Most music is boring. That’s a fact. That’s why it feels like such a revelation that I’ve heard this great album and it’s made me feel so good and like I said, I don’t want to be some trite asshole about this, but that’s an amazing feeling and I wish everyone could feel it. I guess that’s still pretty fucking trite. “Good music is good and it makes you feel good!” – this jerk over here! I guess all I’m saying is please listen to Royal Headache’s album when it comes out on September 2.