Royal Trux

Nobody sounds like Royal Trux. Nobody. They have been putting out the coolest music, wearing the coolest clothes, and getting clean from the coolest drugs since Neil Hagerty left Pussy Galore and teamed up with Jennifer Herrema in the late 1980s. Progressing from pure unlistenable noise to their present state of a structured yet ever-challenging form of straight-ahead rock, their output explores pretty much whatever style of music the pair is into at the time. For awhile it seemed the Trux would inherit the Stones' mantle of crappy scuzz-rock and just OD somewhere, but then they went Skynyrd and put out Thank You, the best Black Crowes record ever. From there the mish-mash reinvention of styles really revs up, and synth-prog, Steely Dan Jazz-Rock, Jimmy Buffet Reggae -- anything you might have hated at one time -- begins to pop up in their music. And it works. Hagerty has evolved into one of the most interesting guitar players of his generation, while Herrema has gone from a throaty grunter to a scat-rap singer with the toughest voice on the block. This is dense, intellectual music, surely, but it hasn't lost its ability to rock out -- Royal Trux have only begun to define just what "rocking out" is.