It’s as if Royal Baths are kissing off this life and readying themselves for the next. Just check the bleak lyrical topics (murder, general depravity, mayhem, and, oh, vampires), as well as the lack of hooks, the droning darkness, and, of course, the album’s title and artwork. Royal Baths even traded in San Francisco for the hard streets of New York. (But we suffer for art, right?) If you can get beyond (nay, embrace) the suffocating paranoia, the creepy dissonance, and the bad-trip vibe of much of Better Luck Next Life, you may be rewarded with the glories bestowed on us by earlier masters of the dark arts: The Velvet Underground, Nick Cave’s Bad Seeds, The Gun Club, and even Delta bluesmen like Robert Johnson. The tremoloed guitars and swirling layers also call to mind bands like The Dream Syndicate and Spiritualized. Credit Royal Baths’ Jeremy Cox and Jigmae Baer with knowing just how many ingredients to throw in the pot: it’s a heady and well-balanced brew of psychedelic, blues-rooted sounds.