Packed like sardines. In 20 short minutes.
Back in 1996 I remember having a conversation with someone about the length of albums. My point was that the ideal album should have at least eleven tracks and be around about forty-five minutes to an hour in length. I had recently bought Oasis' single, Shakermaker, and was surprised to see that it was just eight minutes shorter than Green Day's Dookie album. If nothing else, it was cracking value. An album's length is, of course, rather unimportant in the majority of cases. Early Beatles records barely made it to half an hour and there was a time that The Clash were releasing short, sharp bursts of energy rather than forays into ska and rockabilly. The key is, obviously, quality over quantity.
“The Royal We” album is twenty minutes long. It's eight songs are short, snappy and to the point. It's production and style crams much into the space and one feels that they have had a complete listening experience. But what befalls “The Royal We” is simply that it doesn't leave any lasting impact.
There is plenty to enjoy, while you are listening. The plinky and delicate “Back And Forth Forever” starts us off on a good foot and segways nicely into “All That Rage” with clattering guitars and violins. The rest of the album is perfectly decent, sounding like a more user friendly The Go! Team mixed with a lite Arcade Fire. It pleases throughout, right up to the biggest stroke of inspiration on the record, a cover of Chris Issak's Wicked Game.
However, unlike the two aforementioned soundalikes, there is nothing here that makes it stand out from the crowd. “The Royal We” sounds like a band that knows what kind of a sound that they want without necessarily knowing what components they need to make it. A key example is in the weak vocal performance. Many bands have weak singers that make up for it by having passion or commitment or some mystery ingredient that makes you sit up and listen. The Royal We have none of that. One gets the impression that there were no stylistic choices made with the vocals, simply that, of all the takes, this was the best.
“The Royal We” is a decent effort but, given its length and overall quality, it will only really please die hard fans of the genre. In a world where you have The Go! Team and CSS releasing fully realised albums with stark identities and sounds, “The Royal We” ends up sounding more like a copycat act than a scene defining group. Great name, though.