It’s feature album time again. You may have noticed the name change from “Album of the week” to “Feature album”. This is because these have been coming out less frequently then initially intended and rather than trying to change that we’ve decided to just subtly lower the expectations.
This week we are featuring the most recent offering from Port Macquarie’s Royal Chant. Yes that means this is the third time this year that Mark Spence has been featured in some shape or form, but he’s been busy releasing lots of stuff!
In this the band’s 9th album, Royal Chant continue producing infectiously catchy tunes delivered in a raw garage rocking fashion topped with Mr Spence’s poetic and cryptic lyrics.
13 years. 9 albums.RoyalChantget around.RoyalChant(often abbreviated as RC) is an Australian indie rock band formed in 2009 in the small coastal town of Port Macquarie. The band has made frequent personnel…
Royal Chant (souvent abrégé en RC) est un groupe de rock indé australien formé en 2009 dans la petite ville côtière de Port Macquarie. Les membres du groupe ont fréquemment changé, mais l’auteur-compositeur principal et chanteur/guitariste Mark Spence n’est jamais parti. S’inspirant de Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, Robert Pollard, Shane MacGowan et Michael Stipe (pour n’en citer que quelques-uns), le vaste répertoire de Royal Chant contient des traces de Sonic Youth, de GBV, des débuts du proto-punk d’Idlewild et de tout ce qui a du cœur, une bonne mélodie et une ou deux pédales de fuzz.
Bien sûr, les Beatles s’y cachent aussi quelque part, le tout mélangé au fil des ans dans un mixeur de fuzz-box et fusionné avec une éthique de travail de col bleu, de bonnes manières, et un penchant étrange pour être à l’heure et lire la feuille de travail avant les concerts. Le 20 mai sortait leur nouvel album, Anyways and Also Sorry.
This week we are throwing back to Mark Spence’s previous band before starting Royal Chant. Back in the mid naughties Mr Spence fronted an Atlanta based three piece named Sickboy. The name inspired by the 1996 film Trainspotting. As both releases were EPs, we’re featuring both to provide an album’s worth of music in aggregate.
The band’s first release was ”Vanity and velocity”.
Following this release Mark relocated to Australia. Shortly after the move, Mark explained that ”After Vanity & Velocity came out, some good things were starting to happen with the band, but we kept dropping the ball, both musically and personally. Most of it, if not all, was my fault, but there was always this inherent crippled nature in the way Sickboy functioned as a band in the States. Eventually, I sort of threw the towel in (or many towels), and accepted an offer to play drums on…
This week’s feature comes from the online music project between friends in Tennessee, Missouri, and Australia, Good Fake.
On vocals is frontman for Royal Chant and Designer Mutts, Mark Spence. Mark had the following to say about the release.
“COVID has destroyed the live music sector and the only silver lining of any sort we have found thus far was a bit more time for creative projects further afield from our usual bebop, anti-folk, & indie rock comfort zones.
“You Vultures” is a 7-song effort that straddles the line between LP and EP, and definitely treads in musical territory outside of my comfort zone.
For fans of (maybe, we’re winging it here): Tool, A Perfect Circle, System Of A Down, Foo Fighters, maybe some old Radiohead, Stone Temple Pilots. I dunno, it’s in a heavier vein, you get me.”
A brief respite like waking at dawn as it spreads we sang we danced it came to an end mistakes were made and we would gladly make them all again now we sing in our heads into the void carry on as you were joy is brief, of course we know this but still it hurts
Got bored and decided to do a few more film clips for songs from our Minor Crush LP. (View the first five HERE)
I threw together some vignettes of domestic psychodrama for “Epithet”
And then I begged our good friend and long-time RC film clip producer/collaborator Matt Clements for a stash of NYC hyper-lapse footage and made a lyric video for the album closer “Fading”.
This history feels Familiar, Strange, & Vague “Welcome to the company, m’boy!” they said, grabbing my hand and shaking me limp. It was the beginning of the endless cold in my bones endless cracks in the façade now sleepless & speechless since
“Always aim for the jugular, m’boy!” they said day after day after day until these delusions became routine our daily bread our cup of salted meat
Here I sit and shall remain Familiar, Strange, & Vague
10 years. That’s how long Royal Chant has been in existence. I’m not 100% certain of the exact date we played our first show as “Royal Chant”, but it was sometime just before Easter in 2009 when we opened up for a band called Benjalu somewhere here in the local(ish) area before heading into Albert studios in Sydney to record our first singles with a proper producer.
It’s hard to tell what has changed over the years other than the many, many band members that have come and gone. I can’t tell if it’s everything, nothing, a few things, or just the little things. I can’t tell if still going means we’re doing it right, or doing it wrong, or if it means anything at all. Maybe that’s the wrong question to be asking, and meaning is just a made up word to keep us tied up in knots.
Anyways….here it is, Minor Crush, the 6th LP from a 2-piece band of nobodies from a small town of nowhere.
These songs range from very old and unreleased to a few that were meant for the last album but decided to re-record, while the rest were brand new compositions that came about as they normally do: a collision of accidents and good intentions.
This was recorded at Music Feeds Studios in Sydney, which is sadly no more after shutting its doors earlier this year. Now that it is no longer in existence I can publicly and proudly declare my gratitude to the studio and specifically its owner, Joel King, for allowing us record for free over these last 4-5 years. I’m sure you can imagine what a difference that makes to an indie band. Of our 6 LPs in existence (or 7 depending on how you count), 4 (or 5) were recorded at Music Feeds. It was very much one of our haunts, where I always felt at home, and now that it’s gone of course it feels like the earth has shifted beneath our feet just a little bit more. It happens.
My fav track? (I know you didn’t ask but I’ll pretend like you did).“Hearing Voices Movement”. Any time you can capture the sound in your head you have to consider it a win.
[music video by James Carthew and his fancy-pants code]
Fav track title? “Motivational Speech Impediment”.
Sometimes I get stupid lucky when I stumble on something like that.
I started poking around with the Prelinger Archives and came up with this marvel of modern music videos.
And here’s the clips for the opening bangers for those of you still here wasting company time.
film clip by Greg Perry
Another DIY film clip because of course
5 clips for 10 songs isn’t bad, but certainly feels like another DIY failure in comparison to the 7 clips for the 7 songs that made up Pride & Poverty. The indie OCD-completist in us is a hard voice to staunch.
And….here we are. Largely off the radio with a few exceptions around the globe, a few shows up our sleeves but nothing too drastic, and overall just pondering what to do, where to go, and how it all falls together in the end.
Just a semi-literate musician with thoughts on what would appear to be a variety of subjects, but really just wind up being different takes on music, literature, the occasional poetic investigation, and some generic social grumbling. An American ex-pat living in a small town on the Mid-North Coast of Australia. Expect frequent bouts of homesickness and general amnesia.
slantrhyme 