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The Royston Club had a high concept for the material on Songs For The Spine to which they would always have in mind – ‘De-indie-fy’.
In much the same way bands from Liverpool either talk about their home first or not at all, you sense that The Royston Club will soon have to decide what they’re going to do about Wrexham.
It still feels very weird writing this, because the newly minted city in North Wales has if not physically then in profile been transformed over the first half of this decade.
The process has largely driven by the success of the American owned football team (who wouldn’t want
Deadpool on their side after all?), but the halo effect means using it in your origin story might not now result in just a shrug.
The quartet’s origins lie in a joining together of like-minded school mates Ben Matthias (guitar), Tom Faithfull (lead vocals, guitar) and Dave Tute (bass), with the later edition of Sam Jones on drums.
It was this line-up that played their 2019 debut gig in the tiny Saith Seren pub, but the four-year journey to their outstanding debut album Shaking Hips And Crashing Cars was punctuated by many acts of kindness from the people they never left behind.
The Royston Club’s growth fails to dispel the idea that this sliver of the British music market is mainly a provincial, grass roots affair; the band are part of a new generation of groups with similar backgrounds such as The K’s and The Reytons.
This particular waiting room has a glass ceiling though, one which takes more than good will and pub toilet graffiti to break through.
Recognising this, The Royston Club wrote out on a whiteboard a high concept for the material on Songs For The Spine to which they would always have in mind – ‘De-indie-fy’.
It’s not exactly a bold idea to change direction, but for relatively new talent it’s not exactly one without risk either.
With ambition tempered by obvious pragmatism, On Songs For The Spine this juxtaposition is weighed up with care.
Opening track Shivers is very much a shift the narrative statement of intent. Consciously darker than its predecessors, with more guitar purchase and a reluctance to leap straight at what haters see as pyro and flying lager cliches, the angular post-punk overload is the sound of songwriters demanding a little more of their audience.
Seekers of cheap thrills are rarely swayed by their object’s desire for change, but the anthemic break-up tones of Cariad have songwriter Matthias guilty and beholden to the past in equal measure, whilst the six-minute-plus closer The Ballad Of Glen Campbell features a lead piano being played to within an inch of its life, an epic finish that will shed skins and swallow sins equally.
Obviously though every ying needs a yang; on The Patch Where Nothing Grows the itch gets scratched in (whisper it quietly) archetypal fashion, a neatly swaggering guitar line and row Z chorus feeding the beast admirably.
A repeat of the dose follows via Glued To The Bed, the 3am scratch of being unable to shake a person as a feeling set to chiming chords and thudding drums.
Probably the most interesting segment however is the one that’s most likely to get overlooked; on Spinning the foursome give a more than passable sense of Ok Computer-era Radiohead, an explicit de-indie-fying gesture if ever there was one.
The Royston Club will someday have to come to terms with a home that’s changed since their inception as much as they have.
Songs For The Spine is part of the answer to that question, and should allow them plenty of time to figure out the rest.