Cats & Dogs

It’s not quite Royal Trux stepping up to the big league — that would come later — but Cats & Dogs was a notable change of tone for the duo. Or the quartet — for the first time, they were a functioning four-piece band, and they’d landed in a proper studio, with plenty of time to stretch out (and the mixing board used on the Beach Boys’ Wild Honey, no less). Most of the songs on Cats & Dogs are linear in intent, many in delivery, though there’s still a slipperiness to the Trux’s music that makes it unpredictable. So it’s not too surprising that Cats & Dogs’ highlights come when the Trux teeter on the precipice of unintelligibility — the strung-out blues of “Turn Of The Century” and “Teeth”; Neil Hagerty’s hilarious Prince falsetto on “Tight Pants”; the woozy, blissed-out “Up The Sleeve”; and the perfect kiss-off, the sleep-deprived delirium of “Driving In That Car (With The Eagle On The Hood).”