Twin Infinitives (1990)
Most bands tend to create a double-LP masterpiece well into their career, having established themselves and developed as artists/songwriters. But Royal Trux are not like most bands. In 1990, Hagerty and Herrema found themselves living in San Francisco, having left NYC, and were living in what sounds like a poverty-level existence. Nonetheless, they plugged away with their recording project, booking time when they could. What’s striking about this album is not merely the question of who would want to create something like this, but also who really could, and then actually would?! Hagerty and Herrema ticked all of those boxes. It’s a testament to their genius, vision, creativity, patience, and simply not caring what anyone thought. It’s difficult to explain exactly what Twin sounds like. Sure, Captain Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica, as well as Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music, early Sonic Youth, and maybe even Can come to mind and are legit connective tissues (Herrema has stated Blue Oyster Cult in interviews, which isn’t super apparent to the listener, to be honest), but that doesn’t really capture the chaos or beauty of the record. One prevailing theory is that band that recorded basic tracks and layered all kinds of effects over them, then began lots of cutting and splicing in the editing process, only to remove the basic tracks from the final mix, leaving all those layers of effects to be prominent in the final product. Twin plays like a fever dream, of sorts, with various fragments coming in and out of consciousness, so to speak. A repetitive guitar riff may come in for a bit and then fade away, to be replaced by various synth phrases, drum machines, and Herrema and Hagerty at times wailing as if in pain, and others calmly singing about ice cream. According to interviews, Hagerty and Herrema recorded the album completely sober, but listened back and reviewed the mixes under various substances (i.e. the marijuana test, LSD test, etc.). The song titles reveal a lot about where their heads were at this time: “Yim Jim Versus The Vomit Creature,” “Ratcreeps,” “Chances Are The Comet’s In Our Future,” and the album’s centerpiece, the sidelong, nearly 15-minute epic “(Edge Of The) Ape Oven.” It’s certainly the most challenging of the Trux catalogue to digest, but does reward the listener’s investment by slowly revealing more of itself over time. Twin Infinitives stands in a league and category all its own. To most indie bands and fans, it’s way too avant-garde, while to avant-garde enthusiasts, a record like this, made by two skuzzed-out noise-sters is probably too left field.