Accelerator

Royal Trux recorded their seventh album to fulfill their brief alternative rock-era run on a major label, but when Virgin Records heard it, they cut their losses and allowed Neil Hagerty and Jennifer Herrema to take the completed masters back to their former home, Drag City Records. It's easy to see why: where the duo's two Virgin albums, Thank You and Sweet Sixteen, were relatively easy to digest grunge-era takes on the R&B- and country-inflected skronk of Neil Young and Crazy Horse, Accelerator is unapologetically hard to get a handle on. Crackling with distortion and noise, the songs are built on aggressive repetition: "The Banana Question" consists almost entirely of Herrema and Hagerty yelling "Is that a question?" repeatedly over a deliberately nagging sing-song riff. But listening to the album again following its 2012 Drag City reissue, it makes a compelling argument for Accelerator as an underappreciated precursor to post-millennial indie icons like Fiery Furnaces and The Black Keys, whose less hectoring take on the midpoint between Elmore James and early Sonic Youth in retrospect owes a lot to tracks like the unexpectedly tuneful and soulful closer "Stevie (For Steven S.)" and the dynamic single "Liar."