Confident and unabashed in their grasp of late-60s Anglophilia a la the Pretty Things, and the brassy romp of early ‘70s AM rock. It’s a new sound for ROHS that, if anything, hearkens back to the rough, instantaneous pop appeal of their Peter Katis (Interpol, The National) produced 2005 debut album, Tree City. But much has changed for group the since they were traveling the country with the likes of Hot Hot Heat, Cake, and Brendan Benson in support of that album.
Returning to Brooklyn in 2008, the band took a needed breather, but new songs and rehearsals emerged following the New Year. Recording started on their third album, Hey There Golden Hair, in October of 2009 on the boys’ newly purchased Tascam MS-16 1” tape machine, which was|lovingly dragged to several studios across Northwest Brooklyn before settling at Tommy Brenneck’s (Budos Band, Menahan Street Band) Dunham Studio for mixdown this past May. Produced by Trokan with engineer Matt Shane (Flight of the Conchords, Rosanne Cash) this was the current line-up’s first foray into a proper recording session, drawing little help from the outside save that of a horn section borrowed from Daptone Records.
Two tunes from Hey There Golden Hair, “Electric Eye” and “Face In The Fog,” were released as a limited-run 7” single through NYC indie Engine Room Recordings. Jon Pareles of the NY Times stated, “There’s a lot of the Beatles, especially their piano-pumping side, in the songs of Robbers On High Street, updated with Elvis Costello’s gruffness and a matterof-fact desperation,”. The new jams quickly made the rounds online, including a giveaway on WNYC, which they called, “an aggressively catchy tune that harks back to the big, beautiful, horn-filled pop-rock of the ’60s and ’70s.” |
