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.
