Micro: Royal Coda - To Only a Few at First (Blue Swan)

 

California progressive and post-hardcore supergroup, Royal Coda are back for a third record. Unless you’ve been outside of the Swancore sphere socially for the past few years you probably know the deal here already; ex-members of Stolas, A Lot of Like Birds and most recently Will Swan of Dance Gavin Dance come together every so often to write, well, exactly what you expect. That’s just it too, this record is more or less just more of the same. I feel like with Tilian Pearson’s antics this year everyone is looking for the band in this lane they’re allowed to listen to and Royal Coda just sort of fit the bill. They also make a consistent splash for a short time off of the inclusion of Sergio Medina and Kurt Travis alone. Not that these two don’t deserve the praise, mind you, if there’s one thing I feel this group is good at it’s their respective roles in their band but ultimately feel like that’s all this is. At about the halfway point of this record I just sort of get bored and I feel like I’ll forget all about all these songs in about a week or two until the next record comes along.

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