RTX Reviewed
RTX
Western Xterminator
(Drag City)
The Satanic-sounding psychedelia of Western Xterminator brings RTX further away from their art-damaged roots.
Appearing: May 7th at Empty Bottle in Chicago.
In one of the key moments during the film version of Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity, Barry (played by Jack Black) is disgusted with himself for liking a song created by some neighborhood skate punks. The track, while sounding as if the film’s producers spent $5 creating it on a tape recorder, is actually “Inside Game” by Royal Trux (the immediate precursor to RTX). Royal Trux’s game, as a direct descendant of Pussy Galore, was a wild musical “deconstruction” of cock rock, often recorded while “musicians” Jennifer Herrema and Neil Michael Hagerty were completely bingeing on heroin. The noise-or-art debate ran squarely through Royal Trux.
“Game” was recorded after the duo had cleaned up, however sobriety only made them more coherent, no less polarizing. When they ultimately split up in 2001, only the Barrys of the world noticed, while the rest of us exhaled upon the news a 20-year assault on our ears was over.
Hagerty revived the spirit with his solo albums and the recording pseudonyms Howling Hex and Weird War, yet Herrema’s reemergence has proven more surprising. On this, RTX’s sophomore album, and their debut, 2002’s Transmaniacon, Herrema’s tenacity galvanizes a disciplined album of razorsharp, post hair-metal guitars, sawing and squealing their ways through a cock rock apocalypse. She remains hard to decipher with her Kim Gordon-possessed-and-trapped-underwater snarl, but if the music is any sort of rosetta stone she’s one about top-down, high-octane cross-country racing. It isn’t a perfect album — once again we’re wondering if there’s a punchline — but it’s satisfying to know that for Herrema some jokes do get old.
— Steve Forstneger
