Truly… man, those guys had a different vibe.
I first heard them around ’94 when someone at the store played me Fast Stories… from Kid Coma. It wasn’t the typical loud Seattle sound — it was more atmospheric, kind of dreamy and spaced out, but still had this edge to it. Robert Roth’s voice and the way Hiro Yamamoto’s bass sat in the mix just clicked with me. I bought the record and ended up listening to it a lot more than I thought I would.
I saw them live a couple of times once I was living here. One night at the Crocodile Café in ’95 really stands out. The place wasn’t completely packed but it felt right, and they played this long, flowing set that just pulled you in. They weren’t trying to be the loudest band in the room or the next big thing — they were just doing their own thing. You left the show feeling like you’d been somewhere else for a while.
They were part of that second wave of Seattle bands. Robert Roth, Hiro Yamamoto (who used to play with Soundgarden), and Mark Pickerel (from Screaming Trees) got together in ’90 and kind of carved out their own little corner. They put out a couple of records on Sub Pop and got some good local love, but they never blew up the way a lot of the other bands did. I always thought they deserved more attention than they got.
By the late nineties things got pretty quiet. The band kind of faded out after ’96 or ’97. Robert did some solo stuff later, but Truly as a group just… stopped.
These days in 2002 I still pull out Fast Stories… from Kid Coma every once in a while when I want to remember that side of the Seattle scene that wasn’t all about the big anthems and the hype. Truly were never trying to be stars. They were just making music that felt like their own, and I always respected that.
They weren’t the biggest name, but they were one of the ones that made the scene feel deeper than just the radio hits.