Bryan Devendorf Announces Debut Album 'Royal Green,' Out Today
Devendorf is a founding member of "The National."
By: Sarah Jae Leiber Aug. 28, 2020
Bryan Devendorf, founding member and drummer for The National, has shared a new project today under the moniker Royal Green and has released a self-titled debut album, his first as the lead vocalist. Royal Green was co-produced with Nate Martinez and recorded in Brooklyn, NY. The 8-song album features original songs as well as some surprising covers. Album Cover Artwork by Nancy Hollinghurst, and design by Bryan's big brother Scott. Also out today is the video for the single "Breaking The River," a breezy jam that features additional guitar from The National's Aaron Dessner, and some groovy bass playing from Bob Weir Campfire Band bandmate, Josh Kaufman. See full tracklisting below. Watch the video HERE and buy/stream the album HERE. Additional Royal Green merchandise including a beach towel, hat, and sweatband are available HERE.
Devendorf's Royal Green approach was a "many-channels-open" style of creation. Satellite signals, strange voices from lost television documentaries and radio operas are all woven into its fabric - like it's using these endless tides of media and information to unlock the subconscious. Even its covers - Bob Dylan, Fleetwood Mac, The National, The Beatles - are like stunning, albeit satanic takes on hymns, or like American standards almost dragged into the underworld. Like the best of Spacemen 3, Sparklehorse or massively underrated San Fran band Skygreen Leopards - the music makes you queasy in one movement and lulls you into blissmode in the next. It's the very edge of outsider pop songwriting.
For all the amphitheaters and festival fields Devendorf has played to over his career, Royal Green almost feels like an un-learning and a newfound love of homemade/found/fractured sounds - and how, if collaged just so, detritus can become stunningly gorgeous and surreal. And not without hooks. Look no further than "Frosty" which could be Little Billy Corgan's decayed demo tape from just before the Smashing Pumpkins appeared on the scene. And the unspooling, slightly unglued dream-pop of "Breaking the River" is as rapturous as it is sinister. And that's probably where Devendorf wants it.
Listen to "Breaking the River" below.
Royal Green tracklist:
- Frosty
- If Not For You
- Breaking The River
- Baby You're A Rich Man
- What If You Are The Sick Passenger
- Halo Chagrin
- Hallucinations
- Dreams
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