(AOTW) PRATTS & PAIN - Royel Otis

Who the hell are Royel Otis.

After countless repeats of “Oysters In My Pocket”, due primarily to Spotify spoon-feeding me shellfish after my playlists have over rotated, I found myself diving deeper into this elusive question after stumbling across Royel Otis’ viral cover of “Murder on the Dancefloor”. The raw, rugged, yet clean cut and authentically sunbleached instrumentation that Sunroom could only dream of, immediately caught my attention, especially from such a recently overplayed tune that I hadn’t given anymore thought than SaltBurn itself.

Royel Otis has that sonically sleepy surf sound that I never knew I was searching for.

After exploring their discography for the last couple weeks, I accidentally heavily pregamed for their debut album, PRATTS & PAIN, which dropped on February 9th, 2024. PRATTS & PAIN is split 50/50 between new songs and still fresh singles from months prior. Although a band with such sonic style couldn’t have come from anywhere but Australia itself, PRATTS & PAIN is named after a Pub in the South of London, preferably where pints, chit chat, and good people can be found.

Overall Thoughts:

PRATTS & PAIN feels like an epic journey, with no starting point and no destination. I find myself getting completely lost amongst the tracks and the music mixes in my head creating a melting pot of sounds that I trace to closer to a universe rather than my shitty USB headphones, which is a feeling I love. The music feels almost so simple and raw, that it’s unintentionally poppy, creating such re playable segmented singles within the weeds of the whole project.

Royel Otis makes the perfect case that it’s not what you say, but how you say it. With often indiscernible lyrics for half of the mixes, it almost evokes more emotion that straight forward narrative songwriting as it creates such space for interpretation and application to what ever universe you want these songs to live in.

With static synth drones amongst clear and crunchy guitar tones tucked behind sleepy, yet soulful vocals, PRATTS & PAIN creates such a unique sonic universe amongst the album, all while still having some amazingly replayable breakout singles that all easy chalk up their own music videos in my head.

If I had to compare Royel Otis to another band, I would compare them to the likes of earlier Spacey Jane, only if this group of Australians smoked a little bit more Malboro’s, named Harry Bryant as surfer of the year, and listened to a hell of a lot more Ty Segall.

Favorite Tracks:

Fried Rice - Lyrically one of my favorite Royel songs, closely behind their 2023 release Kool Aid. The way the melody of the verse melts together with every word as they sing “Sip from the sippy with your French fried rice” feels too good to be true. Even better as they sing “Now come on Eileen” during the exploding chorus of heavy bass and tightly loud guitar riffs, which creates an amazingly dynamic push and pull between the chaotic loose chorus and restraint verses.

Sonic Blue - Easily my favorite song out of the new releases on the album. Sonic Blue starts with panning rattling guitars that create the perfect intro in my mind for an Australian surf film. Slowly filled in with synths and the classic Otis guitar and bass, Sonic Blue feels like a treadmill of sounds that smoothly build upon each other, yet still creating diverse intervals between the instrumentals and chorus.

Heading For The Door - My favorite out of the recurring singles on the album. Centered around a

metronome synth and crisp drum beat, Royel Otis really showcases how they can turn something starting so simple into an amazingly melodic song, with the catchy synth motif reaccuring in pockets throughout the song.

Daisy Chain - Love the crunchy guitar riffs that blend with the vocals on the verses and the erruptive falsetto chorus that create a similar vibe to the lines of Ty Segall’s 2014 song, “Tall Man Skinny Lady”

Rating - 8.5/10

Although early, I wouldn’t be surprised if this is one of my favorite albums of 2024, not a bad track on the whole project and has a ton of replay ability

Only thing holding this album back is that a lot of the songs on the album sounds similar, which is great if you enjoy the sound, but I’ve already found myself replaying mostly my top 5 from the album as they do a better service than some of the other buried cuts on the project