Royel Otis: Hickey review – Australian duo come off as problematic exes on their second album

Royel Otis dabble with grunge before straying into pop territory on their second album, ‘Hickey’ - (Zora Sicher)

A year is a long time in pop. Twelve months ago, Royel Otis were being feted as indie-pop’s most lovable boys-next-door. Sweet, Aussie beach-bar tunes jangled through the Nineties grunge influences of their buoyant 2024 debut, Pratts & Pain. Their open-hearted covers of two anthems by women – Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s “Murder on the Dancefloor” and The Cranberries’ “Linger” – went viral. But their second album, Hickey, lands as Royel Maddell (guitar) and Otis Pavlovic (vocals) deal with controversy around its lead single, “Moody”.

It’s a slacker-strum of a track, so Nirvana-indebted you can practically hear the sleeve of Kurt Cobain’s cardigan snagging on those saggy electric guitar strings. Over the hook, Pavlovic offloads about a girlfriend who’s “a bitch when she’s moody”. So much so, he complains, that she only focuses on the calls he doesn’t pick up and misconstrues his best intentions. “Late nights she’s always accusing,” he sings, “Her questions are loaded/ She’s cryptically coded.”