By Nicole Villeneuve

Every Tuesday, Torontoist scours record store shelves in search of the city’s most notable new releases and brings you the best—or sometimes just the biggest—of what we’ve heard in Sound Advice.

When Three Gut Records ceased operations in 2005, it left a gaping hole in the larger Toronto-area music community. The Guelph-originated label was short lived but prolific and hugely significant, not unlike one of its primary acts and raisons d’être, Royal City. The promise of a once-planned posthumous Royal City rarities compilation has been lingering unfulfilled since the Three Gut demise, but earlier this year Sufjan Stevens’ (a long-time friend and supporter) Asthmatic Kitty Records picked it up for release, and today is the day we can hold it in our eager little hands (it’s distributed in Canada by Outside Music). A wise woman once said that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone; awful clichés and Counting Crows covers aside, in the case of Royal City, she couldn’t be more right.
Everything everyone ever loved about Royal City is ample in this anything-but-haphazard collection of never-released originals and covers. From the slow, mournful dirge of “They Come Down,” to the boisterous cover of Iggy Pop’s “Success,” singer Aaron Riches’s distinctive tender-cum-vengeful voice is as consistently evocative as the band’s Wilco/Band-esque folk-rock. The sometimes-scrappy but always-focused musicianship of core members Riches, guitarist Jim Guthrie, bassist Simon Osborne, drummer Nathan Lawr, and Lawr’s eventual replacement, Lonnie James, really is almost perfect in its imperfections; few bands come as close—lyrically, vocally, or musically—to the effective simplicity Royal City achieved with its refined indie-folk-tinged rock. There’s even an out-cooling of one of the decade’s purveyors of American indie cool, the Strokes, with the warm, balladified cover of “Is This It.” Royal City did it (all of it) without verging on novelty or ever coming close to disposability—a testament to the rare, innate artistic authenticity of this too-often overlooked national gem.
It speaks volumes to Royal City’s influence and ingenuity that, even with a b-side type of retrospective, they still sound—perhaps now more than ever—relevant, and Royal City stands out as one of the best releases of the year. “A Belly Was Made for Wine” is available as a free download here. Then treat yourself to the rest of the record; you’ve earned it.