“See, I haven’t come very far,” Laura Harrell remarks with a smirk while pointing out the front window of the All Good Café, where she now works, toward Baylor Hospital a few blocks away, where she was born. The joke is her father’s, and Laura finds it amusing enough to retell. Humor and self-deprecation are characteristic of Harrell, a steadily amused waitress who also happens to front what is likely the best Dallas band you’ve never heard of.

I am aware that making declarations of unheralded genius – “most underrated,” “best artist/singer/band/food you’ve never seen/heard/tasted” – are frequent and normally made without justification. My own assertion is made only in the scope of my awareness – I can only assume other brilliant, unheard things exist here – with the conviction that Romp Almighty is known to a degree that is truly disproportionate to their talent.

Romp Almighty is a two-piece band that manages four elements – guitar, voice, drums, and keyboards – between them. It would be difficult to overstate their connection to Dallas. Laura’s case has already been made. Drummer and keyboardist Trey Pendergrass, too, was born and raised in the East portion of Dallas proper, a walk away from the clubs and stages where he plays now.

The two have been involved in area bands for several years. Before Romp Almighty, Laura fronted the short-lived Bertha XL, later filling in on vocals for Valentines. Trey drummed for Slick 57 for the better part of a decade, starting in the mid-‘90s, and also managed drum duties in Vibrolux. They started Romp Almighty in 2005, with high expectations for the kind of music they would make and the quality of songs they would write together. Marketing their music was always an after thought, though recording it in a way that satisfied them was never a question.

In the spring of ’08, Laura declared over a table of wine, “We’re just finishing up our first album and…It’s. Going. To. Rock,” punctuating each word on the table with her forefinger. She leaned back with a satisfied look, I think realizing that what she’d just said was true. This would be the first full album after having issued an EP of demo material in their first year as a band.

The album, Promotional Copy, was pressed and ready to hand out by April of ’09. In the spring of 2010, I tried to confirm this with Trey Pendergrass who looked askance with his brow furrowed in deliberation, trying to decide if their album really had been available for an entire year already. I bought one that night and made a similar expression upon taking it home and listening halfway into the first track, wondering how the album had been out a full year without me hearing about it.

By their habits and self-assertion, Romp Almighty promises to be something – imaginative Texas rockers, stubbornly and confidently assured in their methods – and Promotional Copy bears this out. In conversation and dialogue, one can tell when another person is well-read. In the same way, one can tell from Promotional Copy that Romp Almighty is well-listened. They know from experience what sounds are right and where they belong, practiced at boiling down the elements of song-craft to its essentiality. They are a refinement, electrically quickened in certain places, casually pulling back-porch whiskey in others. Promotional Copy is nostalgic and snarky, pensive and peacockish.

Romp Almighty understands that the best music is not a matter of verbosity, staggering wit, or instrumental virtuosity, but a certain unrepeatable mixture of qualities. Ideal songs are simple melodies, but always new. They are a certain word and sound appropriate to be uttered and captured but once, to be heard and enjoyed over and over. Laura Harrell’s singular voice is the fulcrum of this originality, of such strange tonality and inflection as to lend a kind of fantastic quality to the music.

Harrell affects a Texas genteelness that belies her more tameless musical potency. It is this same quiet, deferential manner that may contribute to Romp Almighty’s below-radar presence in Dallas. The two are practiced musicians who like to write, perform, and record. Beyond that, and by their own admission, Romp Almighty is nonplussed. “We don’t sound the same [show-to-show] and we never market ourselves at all,” Laura offers as explanation for her band’s limited profile. The two jokingly point out that they consist of Romp Almighty’s marketing and distribution branches, each possessing a case of CDs they too routinely hand out for free. It is indicative of the band’s ingenuousness. They freely admit that they never planned to make money by making music. For them, the joy is in the work.

Despite being so excelled in writing and recording music, Romp Almighty rarely plays to a packed room. In fact, Trey cannot remember ever playing in front of more than a handful of people in their five years as a band. But the two are hardly boiling over with discontent. For the time being, they seem satisfied at improving with each new recording.

Romp Almighty is already sitting on one recorded, unreleased album and enough material for another. Their next album, tentatively titled The Master List, is due out soon. Recorded in one day, Trey is satisfied that the new album achieves a consistency that was lacking on Promotional Copy, which was recorded over the span of a year. The speed with which the new album is released depends on the band receiving nothing more than their due attention. Serious and attentive as they are about music, Romp Almighty deserves at least that much from fellow Dallasites.