The Royston Club’s debut album ‘Shaking Hips and Crashing Cars’ was a breath of fresh air when it was released back in June 2023.
Packed full of catchy melodies and big singalong choruses that are incredibly fun to belt out after a few pints of Dark Fruit, it’s exactly the type of thing I want from a young British indie band and it soundtracked my summer that year.
However it’s fair to say that it was crafted over several years. Some songs – like ‘Mariana’ – were given a fresh lick of paint for the record but they’d been floating around on Spotify since pre-pandemic.
So while I don’t want to dive straight into cliché, it’s true that second albums are regarded as notoriously ‘tricky’ and the Wrexham four-piece could have played it safe by just trying to recreate the sound of their debut.
What they’ve actually done on ‘Songs for the Spine’ is much bolder.
More mature
As soon as the riff of ‘Shivers’ kicks in, it immediately feels heavier and meatier, setting the tone for what is a much more mature record than ‘Shaking Hips and Crashing Cars’.
The brilliant ‘The Patch Where Nothing Grows’ was released exactly a year prior to the release of this album, so it’s perhaps natural that it sounds much more akin to the sound of the first but it’s the mix of this type of song, along with some of the more experimental aspects of this record that makes it so interesting. .
If ‘Shaking Hips…’ is a teenage lad going on nights out and looking for girls, ‘Songs for the Spine’ is a young man who has loved and lost – as showcased incredibly the heart-wrenching ‘Cariad’, which builds to an emotional bridge powerfully belted out by frontman Tom Faithfull, and one that is already regularly screamed back to him at gigs and festivals.
Speeding things back up, the opening riff of newest single ‘30/20’ is a bit pop punk and sounds like it could be in an American Pie film but the lyrics are rooted in songwriter and lead guitarist Ben Matthias’ Welsh identity and guilt for now living in England.
Matthias already feels like an accomplished songwriter and he’s written a few more soft rock ballad-type tacks on this album that allow Faithfull’s falsetto to soar, including ‘Spinning’ and album closer ‘The Ballad of Glen Campbell’ – a 6-and-a-half minute piano-led epic, that really showcases Faithfull’s vocal range, is packed full of harmonies and instantly becomes one of their best songs.
Anyone expecting a rehash of ‘Shaking Hips and Crashing Cars’ may be disappointed as ‘Songs for the Spine’ is a much more mature, polished record. Although it may not be as instantly accessible, this isn’t a bad thing at all and instead makes it a hugely impressive sophomore album that has seen The Royston Club evolve as a band and take creative risks, rather than just resting on the laurels of their debut.