Royal City is gone but not forgotten, and today that is more true than it has been in a while. We are lucky to be the ones releasing their retrospective self-titled rarity and B-side collection outside of Canada. Feel free to catch up and purchase (CD – $12, LP – $14). If you’re not yet convinced yet, super-blog MBV has a wonderful full, free, stream of the album for the interested right here.

Turns out MBV are big fans; in fact, with some help from Lisa Moran and Tyler Clark Burke (founders of the late, great Three Gut Records – Royal City’s old home) Ryan@MBV organized and printed some gorgeous limited edition, giclee prints of the bands’ previous album covers which were designed by Tyler Clark Burke. Yes, of course you want one. There are two ways to obtain. One is to enter a contest at one of three blogs you should already be visiting daily: MBV, Chromewaves, and Said the Grammaphone.

Or, if you’re not the contesting type, you can buy them from us for $15 right here. Did we say they are archival quality on German Etching stock? They are.

You either love Royal City, or you don’t know of them. We have good news either way. If the latter is true, we’re hoping a well-thought collection of rarities, b-sides, and special songs by the now-disbanded Canadian group changes that for you. Royal City is, dare we say, great. We are lucky to know them because they played their first show in NYC in Sufjan Stevens’ living room in 2003, after wrapping up a tour in Canada where a (then) little known band named Arcade Fire opened for them. Other collaborations included other Canadian heavyweights like Final Fantasy, Feist, and Bob Wiseman. See? They’re friends of your friends.

A good primer to Royal City is journalist Vish Khanna’s retrospective writeup, which serves as this album’s description on our site. Read it here. And we’ve released a free MP3 from the album, "A Belly Was Made For Wine." Graduate from those to an interview by Khanna with bass player Simon Osborne (read here), and then you should be ready for the self-titled album due on June 23rd.

"A Belly Was Made For Wine" (Download)