“Junkie Nurse”, the first track on the live album released alongside Royal Trux reunion tour, lets you know exactly what they are about. It is a slurred, sleazy, staggering account of stealing prescription drugs. Neil Hagerty’s guitar and Jennifer Herrema’s vocals are dragged in off the streets after a night passed out under a flyover. The track has apparently been recorded on somebody’s phone. It is a complete mess, and glorious with it. This is what Royal Trux have to offer.

Despite their unconcealed heroin habits and disdain for the sensibilities of music corporations, Royal Trux achieved major label status in the 1990s, holding out among the post-grunge wave of signings until Virgin gave them the terms they wanted. They responded with two albums, the last of which, ‘Sweet Sixteen’ featured a famously grim toilet bowl as a cover. The band then returned to Drag City and released a sequence of four turn-of-the-century albums which, in failing to fit the indie, grunge or rock templates on offer, sounded like nothing else. Then they split, leaving a trail of ludicrous drug stories and the respect of their peers, who saw through the junkie couple headlines, to the originality of their songs. Hagerty brought his spiky, feedback-laden guitar to The Howling Hex, a slightly more structured cousin to Royal Trux.

Given their disdain for musical convention, a reunion to hit the nostalgia market has to be more than it seems. Fifteen years after splitting, Hagerty and Herrema have again been lurching around Europe and the States, making a series of brief appearances on stage during which they argue, drink and sometimes play songs. Their gigs have ended abruptly when one or other can no longer stand up. Platinum Tips and Ice Cream faithfully records this atmosphere of uncontrolled chaos, punctuated with moments of exceptional coherence.

Platinum Tips and Ice Cream strips apart tracks from the full range of their career, rendering them looser, dirtier, nastier and messier than their originals, quite an achievement. If you thought 'Waterpark' from Veterans of Disorder was too fresh-faced and clean on the original, Royal Trux have fixed that for you. If you were hankering after 'Esso Dame' from their first, self-titled album all the way back in 1988, it’s here, sounding as though Sonic Youth could really learn a thing or two. 'The Banana Question' from Accelerator is ridiculous and irresistible, a retailing rollercoaster of a song. Royal Trux are experts in doing precisely what they please, and this album is the ultimate expression of their truly uncontrollable energy. They have dedicated themselves completely to subverting both the indie nostalgia industry and their own back catalogue, and the results are part performance art, part musical genius. The album is essential for understanding what Herrema and Hagerty are trying to achieve, and worth it for the exceptionally trippy, closing version of 'Ice Cream' alone. 

Platinum Tips and Ice Cream is Amazon and iTunes.

Alasdair Roberts, from the recesses of the alternative Glasgow music scene, has grown steadily and inevitably in stature. As a modern folk magus, he sings old songs as though they were new, and writes new songs as though he had unearthed them carved into granite by ancient, nameless hands. His discography has been a secret, enduring pleasure - eight albums of intensely felt, intellectually rigorous, beautiful songs, delivered in a traditional style that sounds exceptionally fresh. He sings them solo, on tiny stages and back rooms across the country, stepping from the crowd with his guitar to leave listeners transported, rooted to the pub carpet. He also sings with a string of collaborators - the ‘& Friends’ of his previous release, A Wonder Working Stone - who lay colour and texture under his reedy voice and dancing acoustic guitar. 

Pangs, long-awaited, at least among Roberts’ many fans, is a mature work, in which exceptional songs are given room to breathe, lovingly worked upon by musicians including Alex Neilson of Trembling Bells, serial Scottish guitarist Stevie Jones, and a parade of Glasgow-based instrumentalists. The result is a classic of its kind.

The title track, which opens the album, has the eerie familiarity of a song that must, surely, have been written in the 17th, not the 21st century. It is a lament for a future that only awaits: “the day our king comes o’er the border”. With Roberts kneading a communal lament, the sorrowful melody, over a deep, funeral procession bassline and muffled snare drums suggests a death march that can never end. The opening verse:

“Friend of mine, come in to dine // and drink with me now times are harder // bitter nuts and sour wine // and all we find within the larder”,

sets a dismal tone, and the abdication of responsibility for change to the king who will never arrive becomes a direct reflection of our political culture as democratic lights go out across the Western world. However, not all is gloom, and the glory of Pangs comes in its gorgeous shifts of tone – from despair to ecstasy. On ‘An Altar the Glade’ a pair of scurrying acoustic guitar echo each other across a sinister yet bouncy woodland parable, complete with barking dog. ‘The Breach’ rolls around a fiddle melody worthy of Dave Swarbrick in early ‘70s Fairport Convention.

Elsewhere, cheerfulness levels reach new heights, with a Morris tune threatening to become a boogie on ‘The Angry Laughing God’, and ‘The Downward Road’ bringing a folk-rocking abandon to particularly arcane lyrics: “Sparrows twelve were the birds he moulded // moulded of the living clay”, telling a tale of creation and morality worthy of a treatise on medieval alchemy.

The lyrics are alive with antiquated poetics, a style that is entirely unique to Roberts. His writing is beautiful and captivating, but neither separate nor distant. He sings as though an unbroken folk tradition had continued in a parallel culture, drawing our present, dark times into its embrace and making our concerns part of an ancient cycle in which reality and magic interweave across time.  Every song on Pangs matches its lyrical density with delightful layers of subtle instrumentation – the sound of a band born to play together. It is perhaps as a conductor and enabler of co-operation, the pole for a shifting group of players, that Roberts has the most to offer. As ‘Vespers Chime’ declares: “We will live in magnificence if we can”- a much-needed manifesto for a glorious future. 

Pangs is available via Amazon.