Search - Royal City :: Alone at the Microphone

This Toronto band not only takes the title for its second album from Neil Young's "On the Beach" ("I went to the radio interview/ But I ended up alone at the microphone"), but also inherits the tattered rock icon's unique ability to play a windswept blend of vintage Americana that eerily sounds more compelling than anything coming out of the Lower 48. You can practically feel the bone-chilling desert wind on the back of your neck as the desolate, perilously crude "Rum Tobacco" stumbles out of the speakers, while the punch-drunk banjos and sweet verses of "Under A Hollow Tree" instantly transport you to a muggy back-porch in the Deep South. The engineers at Disney would no doubt be impressed by the attention to detail. Meanwhile, the spare, yearning centerpiece "Dank is the Air of Death and Loathing" ("I worried here and I've sighed here / And now you are vomiting") combines the very real kind of gut-level roots punch that is usually only associated with Lucinda Williams. Alone at the Microphone is the sound of America as seen by a group of people who are clearly enamored by every pebble on the road, every splattered bug on the windshield. --Aidin Vaziri