The Royston Club race ahead of Oasis and mgk in midweek album charts
Are Wrexham's finest on course to score their first ever number one?
By Nick Reilly
The Royston Club are leading the race to Number 1 in this week’s Official Albums Chart.
The Wrexham’s band second album Songs For The Spine was released last Friday and they are now on track to hit the top spot for the first time, having previously achieved a Top 20 debut with 2023’s Shaking Hips and Crashing Cars.
But in order to hit the top spot, they are facing strong competition from mgk – the rapper fka Machine Gun Kelly – and Oasis. At the time of writing the band’s second album is less than 1,000 units ahead of mgk’s seventh studio record, lost americana, and Oasis’s singles compilation Time Flies… 1994-2009, which has experienced renewed popularity in the wake of the band’s comeback shows.
Also flying high this week is Ethel Cain, on course for the top five with her second album, Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You. She previously hit Number 10 with her 2022 debut Preacher’s Daughter.
The Royston Club’s second album – which is picking up acclaim across the board – also sees the group tap into a more unfiltered sound than their debut.
“We love our first album, but looking back we deliberated over things and maybe overproduced it a little bit ourselves,” said vocalist/guitarist Ben Matthias.
“Our debut didn’t sound like a band playing live. When we were touring the album people would tell us that it sounds so much better live than it did on the album and I think that was just because it was raw and the sound of us in the practice room,” guitarist Ben Matthias previously said of their debut.
“So we tried to carry that through into the album recording and getting Rich [Turvey, producer] onboard really helped with that. He likes the idea of doing two to three takes, anything more than that and it’s just way too much. That helped us tap into that live sound.”