The new self-titled Royal Coda album is a well crafted soundscape in the vein of some of the music that has remained immensely popular in the alternative music community in recent years, and there’s a good reason for that. The band’s frontman is Kurt Travis, who fronted Dance Gavin Dance and A Lot Like Birds for a time and has remained popular in the wake of his departure from the long-running groups.
The new music from Royal Coda has depth and you definitely garner something from keeping on listening to the album instead of just judging it off the first track. It’s something that feels like more of an all encompassing experience than it is the conduit for a one-hit wonder sort of deal. The album contains a form of experimentation outside that one-hit wonder realm that feels very valuable for the community in which the band is situated.
Travis has one of those voices that, while on the higher end of the spectrum, has a lot of substance to it. He’s not overly up there, if you’re unfamiliar with him; rather, he’s just a striking clean singer whose voice has personality that you can really get into if you’re a fan of technical “-core” music and give yourself the opportunity here.
There are elements that blend in conventions in that genre and there are occasional elements that feel solely the band’s own on Royal Coda. Thematically, the album deals largely with somewhat conventional themes of love and loss; casting those themes through the artistic vision of this band makes something that feels like it’s ready to be popular, though. It’s a little bit into the album that a form of that theme that feels like the band’s own begins to take shape, and overall, the album is definitely something to get into as a whole rather than it is something to get into over one element over another.
That in itself is a special element to the music; it’s the product of a comprehensive artistic vision rather than it is a spastic project that has nothing to back it up. The band, consisting besides Travis of A Lot Like Birds drummer Joseph Arrington and Stolas guitarist Sergio Medina, has their long running experience with the music scene in which they’re operating to draw on when figuring out ways to expand the boundaries of that scene with a new creation, and that shines through on their new record.
