Royel Otis, all the way from Australia, visited the Foundry in Sheffield for their glory to gory EU/UK tour which was followed by the release of their newest album, PRATTS & PAIN, which was released in February of this year.
Royel Otis are an Australian indie guitar pop band that started in 2019 and has found much success with songs like Oysters in My Pocket. Their music reflects a very relaxed atmosphere. They also gained a lot of popularity recently in the last year with covers such as Linger by the Cranberries and Murder on the Dancefloor originally by Ellis Bextor which gained a large boost of popularity also by the film Saltburn where the original song featured. This new fame from TikTok and other social media raised the band’s popularity significantly, with their top two songs on Apple Music being their covers of linger and Murder on the Dancefloor.
Viji was the support act for Royel Otis and only performed for 30 minutes. She is a solo artist and is also from Australia. Her music can be categorized as indie alternative rock. Before the show, I had not heard of her before so coming into the show I had no idea who she was and what her music sounded like. I believe more people should go to gigs regardless of whether they know the artist or not because like me at this show I enjoyed her performance very much. Her music is inspired by early 2000 American pop culture and even moved to America from Australia but now lives in England. She had a great stage presence was energetic and matched her early 2000-inspired music with her cool outfit. Her debut album, So Vanilla, was released in July and this tour allowed her to show off her new music with my favorite off the new album which I heard was sedative.
I had not heard much of Viji and the same goes for Royel Otis. I had heard their cover of Linger and Murder on the dancefloor but I had little knowledge about the band or their sound. I had heard Oysters in my pocket before, probably on Tiktok or somewhere else but at the time, I didn't realize it was them until a few weeks ago. So like I did with Viji I came into the gig not knowing a lot but came out surprised. I previously described the music as “a very relaxed atmosphere” but live they were very energetic and showed more elements of their rock-punk style. The atmosphere was energetic with people dancing and singing all around me. The band members, Royel Maddell and Otis Pavlovic were extremely humble and always showed their gratitude towards the crowd and had a lot of crowd participation. Something I did not realize about the group was how popular they were but fans flooded into the Foundry showing all support in their sold-out show. The performance was amazing with songs such as Going Kokomo and the crowd lit up for the covers lingering and murder on the dancefloor. Overall the night was amazing and I am now a big fan of the group.
