Pratts & Payne, the South London pub that sits around the corner from the famed home studio of producer Dan Carey, has an important place in the history of Royel Otis. When making their debut album with Carey in early 2023, the Australian duo – childhood friends Otis Pavlovic and Royel Maddell – would decamp to the pub to finish lyrics and make decisions on the direction of their first LP. “Dan would ask us to record vocals,” Royel remembers, “and we’d say, ‘Just give us half an hour, we’re popping to Pratts & Payne’, and we’d have a pint, a few shots, and get some lyrics down.” Eventually, it made such a mark that they named the record PRATTS & PAIN.
After forming in 2019 and slowly drip-feeding music into the world during the pandemic, Royel Otis garnered fans in BBC Radio 6 Music, triple j and on US college radio. To date, they have amassed over 35 million streams, covered global playlists on Spotify and Apple Music, and headed out on a debut headline tour of the UK and Europe.
After releasing their first music in the form of 2021 EP Campus, the duo shared a further pair of EPs in 2022 – Bar & Grill and Sofa Kings – which slowly and carefully morphed their sound into new shapes, moving away from synths and towards guitars while keeping their signature and rare chemistry. “If you play songs with reverb and synths, they can become a bit washed out,” Otis says. “When you go back to basics and do it dry, there’s an energy and a magic there.”
After this realisation, the pair learned to trust in their demo recordings, which often captured a type of spontaneity and energy not able to be replicated through endless studio-based tinkering. “We worked with the song, not with layers,” Royel adds of the change in approach. In Carey, they found a producer keen to capture a band’s essence and zeal rather than sand their music down to its most polished form. “He definitely didn’t overproduce it,” Otis says, with Royel adding: “He made sure that it was what we wanted, and not just what would express his encyclopaedic amount of talent, which he certainly has.”
The pair write lyrics together, and describe the process as like a tennis match. “Someone gets an ace, someone gets a fault,” they laugh. “It’s a doubles match and we’re on the same side, playing against a very good brick wall.” In mixing their skill sets, they write songs about drunken arguments and personal trials mixed with surrealism in a way that is mirrored in their music.
Across the debut album, Royel Otis swing between melodic, pop-inspired indie and woozy psych, but it never feels tied to one lane. As soon as one style or mood has outstayed its welcome, they handbrake turn into psychedelic weirdness or dissonant noise, keeping everybody on their toes. After the table was laid on the two EPs, PRATTS & PAIN brings everything from the band’s history together on a record that’s reverent towards their beginnings but unafraid to push forwards into new sounds.
This loose, open formula for what makes a Royel Otis song is written all over PRATTS & PAIN, an album defined by its sense of fun and adventure. On the tracks ‘Velvet’ and ‘Big Ciggie’, Carey’s 11-year-old nephew Archie appears on drums, and a spontaneous energy ran through the sessions, one which can be heard across the album. On first single ‘Adored’, they master the perfect indie-pop hit, while ‘Sonic Blue’ keeps this underlying energy but sets screeching guitars over the top. ‘Velvet’, meanwhile, has the stomping energy of Talking Heads, while ‘Molly’ is an unsettling and deeply atmospheric slow jam.
Whatever sonic template the music might be based on though, the crux of Royel Otis comes back to a foundational DNA of mutual trust. Royel says: “We have fun together, and it’s not difficult. I trust what Otis thinks and what he does, and I back it. If you back each other, something good comes from it.”
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