Royal Blood

Typhoons WARNER BROS

Disco devastation from Brighton’s mightiest blues-rockers.

For decades, anguished blues rock has been a musical gold standard. No matter what scenes, trends and fripperies come and go, there will always be solid currency and credibility in roaring your troubles through a hairy throat to a strutting riff that’s only recently cooled from its magma form. Of the many bands – mostly duos – that plugged in to the source in the wake of The White Stripes, Brighton’s Royal Blood were among the most intriguing, having the ballast of Muse, the snarl of Queens Of The Stone Age and wrenching an entire Zeppelin’s worth of noise from just drum kit and bass guitar on 2014’s self-titled debut. The follow-up, 2017’s How Did We Get So Dark?, doubled down on their muscular blues-pop. Four years on, it’s either stagnate or evolve.

From the sound of , Mike Kerr and Ben Thatcher were the only two people who spent 2020 on a dancefloor; disco rock is the order of the day, adorned with synthesised 70s strings on and , modernist pop, and retro electronics on . trips along on the sort of jaunty psych synth backing that might have been left on the mixing desk from some old Gorillaz session, and if there aren’t actual hand claps accompanying the sequinned Chic chorus of then it definitely wants there to be.