reviews_theroyalty_lovers_220

The Royalty - Lovers

The Royalty

Lovers

“I know exactly what I'm doing,” contends the Royalty frontwoman Nicole Boudreau on their new album, Lovers. That’s not a misnomer: Lovers ferments ’60s pop and doo-wop to create an appetizing, nostalgia-quenching purée. “Other Boys” hosts the transmigrated soul of the Ronettes; “Every Little Bit” climaxes in a wall of sound that Phil Spector would dig. Yet there is an unmoored desperation gnawing at the album’s sense of grandeur, with “Witchcraft” being the rare love-lost lament that earns its keep. While Lovers bears the hallmarks of AM radio ca. 1962, it would be reductive to shrug the album off as a mere throwback. The Royalty bridge the old (eager, girl-pop harmonies) and the new (fuzz, reverb). They traveled to the past to let us know what the future’s like.

Victory http://www.victoryrecords.com

“Bartender”