Royal Treatment Plant

ROYAL TREATMENT PLANT Many a rock journeyman would describe themselves as a missionary, preaching the cause of kick-bottom rock’n’roll rebel-rousing to the savage masses. But very few have actually got their healing hands dirty converting heathens to their strict Christian ways. In fact, besides Kings Of Leon, there might well just be one.

From preaching holy law to the farm-folk of New Guinea to dragging the uninitiated to worship at the altar of melodic punk as singer in Royal Treatment Plant, PP has trodden an unconventional path to rock enlightenment. In fact, it was only when she escaped the church at eighteen after God was rather vague in his selection of a husband for her, that PP was exposed to the unholy trinity of sex, drugs and rock’n’roll in that demonic circle of subsidized lager and rugby soc depravity they call the University system. “In the church that I was in you weren’t allowed to have boyfriends, God told you who to marry. So suddenly a few guys told me that God had told them they had to marry me and I went ‘oh man, this is all wrong, I’m outta here,' and ended up heading to London”.

Freshly inspired by Pixies, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Muse and the wonders of normality, PP set about playing solo acoustic gigs around London, suddenly enraptured with the rock’n’roll dream. When bass players started asking for one hundred pounds a gig though, she resorted to asking the first guy she met at a bus stop in Uxbridge with a bass over his back if he wanted to jam. The guy turned out to be DJ, a Brunel University student fresh out of a Stone Roses style school band and looking for other musical options.

You wait ages for a struggling, tortured artiste and then two come along at once. If not heaven, PP and DJ were certainly a marriage made in an Uxbridge bus station, and the pair began gigging around the London acoustic circuit, at the 12 Bar Club in Denmark Street and the Bedford Arms.

It was only after recruiting guitarist Sam, keyboardist Tom and drummer Chris in 2006 that The Rock really began to take hold, teased out of them by demo recording sessions with Jamie Watson (producer of early Snow Patrol) in Edinburgh. “Edinburgh was our first little break. Jamie liked the stuff so much he said ‘lets release it’.” So, with their folk songs being reborn as kick-ass rock behemoths, RTP’s first single ‘Carry Me’ was released on Edinburgh’s Human Condition Records.

As the gigs got more riotous and the demo sessions got more frequent, Royal Treatment Plant’s modus operandi developed: the sharp, serrated guitar bite and cherubic coos of Metric or Yeah Yeah Yeahs laced with scathing socio-personal lyrics like acid on the soul.

Gaining numerous plays on US radio station KROQ, nods of approval from peers like The Automatic and Los Campesinos! , a slew of memorable press for their debut album Hope Is Not Enough and its immenent release on Universal in Australia, RTP have a busy 2009 ahead of them.