Royal Headache
Subscribe
X

Get the latest from Beat

Royal Headache

royalheadache.jpg

Considering Royal Headache came out at the beginning of 2011, the construction of High was rather drawn out. In an interview with The BRAG in mid-2014, Shogun revealed that the instrumental tracks for album two were recorded as far back as 2013. These original sessions survived onto the album.

“About the end of 2012 we forced ourselves to go in and record a new record and tracked everything, tracked about 16 songs or something, and finished with it,” Sukit says. “I think we were all a bit exhausted by the year and we listened back to it and we all thought it was a bit shit. So we lost motivation to work on it and maybe just lost motivation for the band a little bit. Then we had that break and went back and listened to it and were, ‘Oh, it’s not that bad.’ So Shogun finished off his vocals and then we mixed it and that’s what it is.”

Royal Headache are continually referred to as a garage rock band, and while it’s not an unfounded description, the performances and production on High don’t sound scrappy or rushed.

“I don’t think we’re a garage band either,” Sukit says. “We just try to do whatever feels right and most of the time it seems to work out.

“There was about two years where we just didn’t think about [High]. It’s easy for us to spend way too much time not thinking about a record after we record it. We do this thing where we rush through and record everything in a day or in two days and then just sit there and don’t really work on it until about a year later. I think we’re too embarrassed by our own band. We always think that we sound weird.”

By the time they started working on High, the self-titled album had gained stacks of positive feedback, setting them up for major Australia tours and infiltrating other parts of the globe. However, this wasn’t enough to dispel the band members’ default insecurities.

“It was just a weird time,” Sukit says. “We just finished doing all these entertainment centre gigs with The Black Keys where we had about 20,000 people telling us that we sucked, then you go into a studio… We were doing all these things that we wanted to do, but then also were like, ‘Well, why are we doing this stuff?’ It takes its toll. At the best of times we’re not very confident. Basically it only takes one person to tell us that we’re shit and we’ll listen to them over a million people telling us that we’re good. We’re a bit weird like that.

“Just overall it was a weird time and we were probably exhausted and needed to take a break from the band. It worked out for the best really because we’ve come back and we’re writing new stuff and it’s like the pressure’s gone. It’s like, ‘Who gives a fuck?’”

Like its predecessor, the songwriting on High is pretty simple – technically and structurally there’s nothing overwrought or elaborate. But in this simplicity lies the magic of Royal Headache. The songs have a dynamic emotional character and inbuilt depth that makes them repeatedly rewarding.

“The songwriting, that’s kind of the main thing we do as a band – just spend a bit of time and try different things. That’s what we did with all those songs. There’s stuff on there like Wouldn’t You Know where we basically just did a quiet lounge song, which we’d never really done before. It’s cool to try and do that different stuff.”

The more time that passed between albums, the greater the anticipation became for the second Royal Headache album – at least among fans, many of whom are madly attached to the band. But despite the prolonged gap, removing themselves from public view was crucial for putting the band back on track.

“The best part about when we stopped playing – and Shogun’s out there saying that we’d broken up or whatever – was the fact that it took all the pressure off. It was like, ‘Nobody expects us to be a band anymore so we can just do whatever.’ We started playing again for maybe about a year before the record came out, but just in our rehearsal studio just doing whatever ourselves. It was good. It was like starting again and just writing music for the fun of it. There was no pressure on anything really. It was like the start of the band again.”

BY AUGUSTUS WELBY