ROYAL TRUX The Point “Bring the bass down a bit… I can’t hear a fucken thing… lose the lights over there altogether…” Before the first note is played, and at regular intervals throughout the next hour-plus, the slouched bleach-blonde Joey Ramone lookalike drawlingly berates the sound and lighting men. Punctuating herself with lazy cigarette sketches in the sweaty air, impenetrable behind aviator shades and eyebrow-skimming fringe. It’s classic Yoo-S-A rock’n’roll cool, that they do over there from about age ten. Unless you’re on stage, you’re an afterthought. You like it? Great. You don’t? You think they care? Royal Trux are a considerably more straightforward proposition than was once the case, their tuneless, freeform rants largely replaced by a (relatively) more traditional, though still awkward and confrontational, rock sound. But you don’t forget your past overnight. So, they lurch sinuously into each number almost by accident, they talk to each other as if oblivious to their surroundings. Occasionally they seem to respond to an incoherent heckle, though it’s hard to be sure. It’s a gig you could dip in and out of and still get the whole sleazy atmosphere but, conversely, it’s also one of the most compelling performances I can remember witnessing. The big bassist (imagine a steroid’n’burger-enhanced Denzil Dexter, the Fast Show’s whacked-out Californian scientist) pulls out onto the freeway and puts his foot down, setting up a tense, rolling riff, laying the foundations for Jennifer Herrema’s sixty-a-day growl. It’s an up-front, less scratchy Make Up, a heavier, faster, more jittery Doors. Blasts of discordant guitar and all the time building… building… and then dropping out, back to where we came in. Back to the bass. After an opening like that, it could only go one way. But it didn’t really. Royal Trux may well have saved their best for first but they follow it with a gritty, brutally short ‘Waterpark’ and suddenly they’re another band. From new album ‘Veterans Of Disorder’ we get such eccentricities as shuffling calypso, ramshackle rockabilly, and what can only be described as ‘My Bonnie’ re-written by the Stones during their little-known Deranged Hawaiian period. Of course, there’s also the obligatory sub-Nirvana number and some of the flatter stuff from the new album is only redeemed by their live. But against that no song outstays its welcome - save for the show closer ‘Blue Is The Frequency’ which degenerates into a pointless jam session. The two drummer/percussionists give everything a further Burundi-esque edge and there is, of course, Jennifer. Her voice is stunning. Think Whitney, think Maria and Celine, and then think again. She growls and croaks and roars, total throat laceration over a range of about half an octave, and it’s brilliant. Once or twice she opts for kittenish, but it’s a diseased, corrupt feline, wailing god knows what over a slow, swampy lament. You’d call a vet if she wasn’t so enthralling. True, Royal Trux play the wasted rock’n’roller chic card for all it’s worth and, also true, it works like the Devil’s charm. You’ve got to be a sucker for this sort of stuff. This snarling, sneering, teetering on the edge, ego overdriven, genius-dusted mutant racket. Cos if you ain’t - as the venerable hell-raiser Louis Jornan once said, “Jack, you dead”. Nately Dunbar - Photo by Richard Hounslow

HAWKWIND The Zodiac Once, they were masters of the universe. They invented space rock, fried their minds with drugs and fried everyone else’s with some insanely frazzled psychedelia. Nowadays though, Hawkwind are washed-up old men who should have called it quits some time in the late Cretaceous era. Oh it starts off well enough. Locked into some incessant hammerlock groove, guitars and synths pulsing over a rib-threatening bassline. This is what it was all about. This is the band without whom there might well have been no trance and no Spiritualized. You can even forgive the fact that the band’s current singer looks like the last casualty of the Battle of the Beanfield. Or Stig of the Dump. But then they go and play ‘Utopia’, seemingly forever. And it is the dregs. Meaningless drippy hippy poetry hung loosely over the sort of dreary folk rock you’d expect coming from Marillion. On and on it goes. Hawkwind are jamming it tonight. Which means we get an hour and a half of what appears to be the same song played over and over again with little regard for basic structure. There’s not even the threat of them suddenly pounding through ‘Silver Machine’ or ‘Master Of The Universe’ or ‘Hashcake 77’. Not that we just want to hear all the old stuff, we just want to go hurtling through the cosmos on the back of some serious acid-fuelled space rock. Incredibly, they even manage to render ‘Assassins of Allah’ impotent, lapsing into some indulgent meandering when they were meant to be charging through some exotic hypnotic mantra. Maybe that’s why Dave Brock chooses to hide himself away at the back of the stage. Perhaps he’s embarrassed. And so he should be. Ian Chesterton

~~~ more live reviews~~~astrid~~~big leaves~~~earthtone 9~~~kane~~~raging speedhorn~~~geneva~~~southern fly~~~