Labels: L’Oeil Du Tigre
Review by: Chaz Hewitt
Royaume des Morts are from Canada, and I think is made up of members of a tonne of bands, so I guess they’re some sort of local supergroup, maybe. But hey, who cares who was in what band when? Right? It’s what these folks are doing now, and this case it’s some really nice, sometimes upbeat, sometimes downbeat indie rock goodness.
I’m definitely feeling the slightly more upbeat songs (“the tape deck ate my hit’, “sunny sunny day’, “motherless kids have eyes’) where the drums are playing up-tempo beats, and the rest of the instruments just jump on board, never doing too much, just enough to make it sound great, and the vocals are very low in the mix, which works brilliantly, and they sound sad, but not too sad. Just the right amount of sadness I’d say.
The slower songs are nice too.
There’s a load of different instruments across the album, but instead of using them all at once trying to be stupidly epic they keep things nice and simple, so when a new sound comes in, you feel it, and it’s a good feeling, you want to stroke your cat or ring your girl or something.
There isn’t a bad song on here, and there are a few total corkers. But this is also the albums downfall, as some of the other songs don’t quite match up.
Overall, this is a solid record of subtle and pretty indie rock music which flows very well. Hopefully these guys don’t just stick to their day jobs (/bands) and write some more albums.