Royal Blood battle their demons – the week’s best albums

Royal Blood: Back to the Water Below ★★★★☆

Royal Blood ran into a spot of bother at a BBC Radio 1 pop concert this summer, when the young audience (assembled for ex-One Direction minstrel Niall Horan and Scottish balladeer Lewis Capaldi) didn’t seem to know who they were. “This is rock music,” frontman Mike Kerr sarcastically berated the lacklustre crowd. “Who likes rock music? Nine people, brilliant.”

Kerr is only 33, and his band have been touted as saviours of British rock for a decade now, scoring three UK number one albums in a row, so it must be galling to realise there is an even younger generation who really don’t seem to know or care about rock at all. Or perhaps the youngsters were confused because Royal Blood are a duo who have dispensed with the instrument most closely associated with rock over the ages: the electric guitar.

The rise of the White Stripes in the late 90s unleashed a wave of duos making rock with only drums and guitar. Royal Blood subsequently reduced the string count by two, foregrounding singing-bassist Kerr, locking tight with hard-hitting, free-flying drummer Ben Thatcher. The music they make is minimalist but not without scope, filling in a huge range of dynamic spaces with the rhythm section’s busy interactions. Think of it as Cream without Clapton, with Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce doing all the heavy lifting.

For those of a technical bent, Kerr splits the signal from his bass, channelling it through chorus and harmonic effects to create additional octaves. Single notes are transformed into chords, and high notes are filtered, distorted and sustained, while everything maintains the deep visceral punch of bass. The result sounds like multiple synthetic guitars, sometimes overdubbed with blasts of synths or piano. Amidst pile-driving riffs, Kerr’s sweet vocals maintain melodic and emotional focus, gliding from mournful baritone to pliable falsetto. No less an authority than Jimmy Page has claimed Royal Blood are taking rock “into a new realm.” To which, one assumes, the Radio One audience would respond, “Jimmy who?”

On fourth album Back to the Water Below, lyricist Kerr sounds like he has been in the wars. Never the most upbeat of songwriters, the 10 economically delivered tracks are rife with imagery of physical altercations, boxing, wrestling, armed combat and (in keeping with the album title) floundering in heavy seas. He has spoken about struggles with rock’n’roll vices, and here battles demons suggestive of depression and insomnia. It might explain his petulance onstage, but crucially he sounds like a man undergoing changes, using music to understand himself.

The implicit aggression in Royal Blood’s heavy, attacking sound is mollified by the way Kerr’s voice will climb up to falsetto for chorus lines. When he sings “I got bruises” on Shiner in the Dark, he’s not boasting. Dreamy album closer, Waves, finds Kerr sadly admitting “I could give up the fight” on a song of touching vulnerability. The kids might not understand, but rock fans should be delighted that Kerr and Thatcher are still in the ring, giving it everything they’ve got. Neil McCormick

Icona Pop, Club Romantech ★★★★☆

In 2013, Icona Pop’s debut album This Is… Icona Pop combined synthesisers, catchy melodies and a message about female empowerment. With a fresh interpretation of electropop, one of the most celebrated genres in Sweden, Caroline Hjelt and Aino Jawo won multi-platinum status, played sold-out festivals, and opened for global tours including those by Miley Cyrus and One Direction.

Club Romatech is their second studio album, released 10 years on, and it’s a product of the pandemic, written by the duo in Stockholm during their time in quarantine together. The 15-track collection, frequently nostalgic and with a range of sultry lyrical flourishes, coheres around a familiar high energy, but there’s a newfound maturity on songs such as Stockholm at Night, the euphoria of which reminds you that electropop can communicate complex feelings too.

At times, the album unintentionally leans into the more mainstream dance-pop genre, as if it were blending into one elongated Charlie XCX song. That said, while Club Romantech lacks a little of the originality of This Is… Icona Pop, the six collaborations on the album betray the influence the duo have among their peers, and each of those partnerships works well. Ten years ago, Icona Pop were electropop trailblazers: for the most part, this second album is a promising next step in their recording career. Jordana Seal