Amidst all the usual pomp and circumstance leading up to the Fourth of July this year, The Royal Firecrackers dropped their first album, American Royal. Apropos of the name, the record comes in burnt orange packaging that suggests a clear-eyed aesthetic and a penchant for design. Yes, the artifact itself is quite beautiful. And while the band name may invoke the patriotic imagery of the holiday and its requisite spectacle, the individual tracks reveal a much more apocalyptic image of a country in existential crisis and an empire in its waning days.
Seattleite Greg Franklin fronts The Royal Firecrackers and has played in several bands, including local acts like Black Whales. With this project, however, Franklin turns his focus to songwriting and honing his own sound. Traces of Typhoon and Coconut Records come through in the album, but you can also hear echoes of early Death Cab for Cutie, especially the albums that predate Ben Gibbard’s obsession with traversing the Atlantic and renaming the glove compartment. These songs carry the torch of an earlier era in indie rock, one that leans heavily on ready-made guitar hooks and propulsive drums.
The opening track, “Cheers to Cosmopolitan,” is one of my favorites on the album. Minor chords abound as Franklin sings, “Cryptic apocalypse, streaming live from a sinking ship,” alluding to the cataclysmic state of climate change and global politics. The pop melody eventually descends into instrumental chaos that includes brass and plenty of distorted guitars, a fitting conclusion for what we might call end times rock (think Phoebe Bridgers’ “I Know the End” or even MJ Lenderman’s “Wristwatch”). “Dark Age,” too, takes on a similar tone, beginning as a minimalist ballad before a range of sonic layers–including drums and various synth pads–come in and transform the song into something more monumental in scope.
Later on, “Medicine Lodge” incorporates some familiar tropes from Americana, successfully bringing this pop sensibility to bear on the midwestern sound of towns like Kansas City, where Franklin grew up. Some slide guitars punctuate the track, and the brass returns to complete the aesthetic. Medicine Lodge, it turns out, is a city in Kansas, but here, the melody uses the western landscape as a backdrop. The opening lines refer to settling down in a “ghost town” before describing a “caravan to the western territory” and “hopes of a new frontier.” The lyrics draw effectively on the multivalent imagery of westward expansion, revealing an incisive craftsmanship and maturity in the songwriting.
The final songs return us to the bread and butter of the record: indie rock hooks and dynamic arrangements that beg the audience to sing along. In “Toasters on Broadway,” Franklin sings, “When you’re bored and young, chaos is a welcome energy,” like a world-weary veteran no longer in the throes of youth. This is a recognizable sentiment for a musician who has spent well over a decade playing in various bands.
It is clear that those decades have culminated in a debut album that is wise beyond its years. In addition to the record, Franklin has posted multiple music videos. I have included links below, one of which is to the “Medicine Lodge” video that transposes an image of the performer onto refracted footage of the plains and other western imagery. If you have the time, it is worth tunneling into the rich visual aesthetics of this project. Regardless, I recommend throwing this record on to soundtrack your summer. You will not regret it.
Written by SilenceKid
