Theatre Royal - We Don't Know Where We Are

by Benjamin Howarth

published: 14 / 11 / 2014

Theatre Royal - We Don't Know Where We Are

Label: Vacilando '68
Format: CD

intro

Superb third album from versatile and underrated Medway-based 60’s garage rock-influenced band, Theatre Royal

In the four years since the release of their debut album, Rochester band Theatre Royal have picked up plenty of noteworthy support-slots and warm words from national DJs. On their third album, they demonstrate a far wider skill-set than the typical 60’s garage band can manage. All four members of Theatre Royal join in with the backing vocals, arranged with the care and attention that suggests an interest in early Motown, while the crisp guitar lines, pianos and even a mournful harmonica all mean that the sound rarely stays in one place for long. I've no doubt that, playing live in the back room of a Medway hostelry, they know how to let rip, but the inevitable comparisons to Billy Childish that tend to follow any band from the Medway towns around have no place here. 'Doubts', for example, has a tinge of 1950’s rock and roll, right down to the Duane Eddy-ish twang of the guitars and a call and response chorus. You could imagine the Beatles doing this one on one of their early 60’s BBC sessions. Later, 'Running on the Spot' is built around fuzzy, trebly electric guitars and a deep bass run. If it wasn't for the “ahh-ahh” backing vocals, you'd put this one on a recent Dinosaur Jr. album. The acoustic guitar strum-along of 'Until the Morning After' nods towards ‘Grand Prix’-era Teenage Fanclub. Lyricist Oliver Burgess looks at the world through the eyes of a cynic, asking repeatedly “where did the good times go?” at one point, and the theme of opening track “The Past is Always Gone” sets the tone for the rest of the album. But he also has a knack for the pithy one-liner - “You say I'm going nowhere/I say I'm running on the spot”, for example. We're left with a collection of eleven spiky, soft, loveable, cynical, tuneful, abrasive rock songs – and the sound of a band seeming utterly in control of their art. Had this record been released in the mid-1980s (which sonically, it very well may have been), we'd no doubt now be proclaiming it as a long-lost classic. Given time, we may still do.

Track Listing:-

1 The Past Is Always Gone
2 Here It Comes
3 Caught Me At the Wrong Line
4 Doubt
5 Over All the World
6 What Was That Sound?
7 French Riviera 1988
8 After the Fair
9 Running On the Spot
10 Until the Morning After
11 Ripple