Review: Royal Baths “Litanies”

Royal Baths - Litanies (2010) [Woodsist] 

There’s a scene from Roger Corman’s 1967 cult film The Trip, in which dealer Max (Dennis Hopper), dressed like some tribal cleric, questions an appropriately drug-induced Paul (Peter Fonda). Calmly confused, Fonda sits in a chair and examines his colorful, glittered surroundings. It’s a cut-rate exotic carnival of sorts, bedecked with mirrors, ornaments, cultural signifiers, colored foil and an off-kilter carousel, slowly spinning in the center. “Everything’s familiar, but I feel separate,” Fonda utters. I’d like to imagine if The Trip existed now, instead set to the tone of some heroin proclivity, it’s this scene where Royal Baths would excel as perfect soundtrack accompaniment.

Once The Baths—changed due to Anticon beat-maker, Baths—this San Francisco quartet amass a definite throbbing psych-garage resonance on Litanies, their Woodsist debut. A reissue of their Wizard Mountain-released cassette, Royal Baths play supplement to the current bouncy 60s revival by delivering homage to its darker, more ‘freaked-out’ side. There’s Spaceman 3’s spiraling daze and overtly heavy doses of The Velvet Underground’s ominous force (this quartet’s entire guitar sound feels plucked from VU’s ode to BDSM, “Venus in Furs”) oozing from Litanies. It’s buried flower-power jangles (“Sinister Sunrise”) and reverb-heavy smatterings of chilling nocturnal despair (“After Death”) that allows this album to echo the The Trip’s aforementioned sentiment of everything being familiar, though coming out feeling totally separate.

Competing in a city where artistic resurgence is seemingly ongoing, Royal Baths—buddies with slackier acts like Ty Seagull and Thee Oh Sees—have made an album all about bummers- drugs and demise afoot. From opener “After Death” and it’s “you’ve got to stand the test” chorus rhyme through “Pleasant Evening,” an album-closer that feels birthed from the walls of an underground opium den, Litanies drones on like a glassy-eyed dance set to faint jingles. Apart from shades of pop delicacy bobbing beneath its nine songs, Litanies is a dance Royal Baths are doing largely with the lights turned way down low. 

ORIGINALLY WRITTEN FOR THE MISHKA BLOGLIN

ROYAL BATHS.