Gun Outfit - Out of Range

  by Kimberly Bright

published: 9 / 2 / 2018

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Review

New band member and visionary multi-instrumentalist Henry Barnes described Gun Outfit’s version of cosmic country as “Western expanse music.” You can hear exactly what he means on 'Out of Range', which is as dependent on the actual geography of the West as the mythology surrounding it. Dylan Sharp describes the album’s concept as “a kind of American neoclassicism, running through an enormous empty set piece of the historical frontier, the only stage on which our kind of puritanical decadence can successfully perform the irony of its existence, and thus salvage small chunks of high value scrap from the culture that now threatens the world with death.” The idea of plunging into the sparse frontier where there are hundreds of miles between towns, landscapes dotted with ghost towns, no mobile signal or wireless access point sounds tempting sometimes. The desert utopia Gun Outfit speak of as transplants from the rainy Pacific Northwest is as quaint and timeless as a John Ford film. Leaving one’s gadget-heavy life behind and going on a vision quest or setting up in a modest trailer like Captain Beefheart in the desert sounds lovely; actually going off the grid when the temperature hits 105 degrees F? No thanks. The album artwork looks a lot like X’s fifth album 'Ain’t Love Grand' from 1985, with band photos framed as cameos, and funky diary-like freestyle calligraphy and sprawling handwriting. The vocal dynamic of Dylan Sharp and Carrie Keith is more Low than X or the Knitters, with a lasting charm that doesn’t end as abruptly as getting one’s hand accidentally slammed shut in a car door after the last note fades. Their melding voices are similar to Dave Alvin’s and Rosie Flores’ on their impeccable duets, as on 'Primacy of Love', full of mournful, echoey loneliness that can’t even be contained by the overwhelming space around: “It’s too late to separate.” Their duet 'Landscape Painter' is a poetic visual artist’s meditations on emptiness, colour (“cobalt blue”), and light. Carrie’s capacity for Americana sweetness is shown best on 'Background Deal', where she puts off-key pretentious cowpunk singers to shame. 'Sally Rose' hints at dream pop backed by the restrained rhythm section of Adam Payne and Dan Swire. Scratchy guitar – presumably from Henry Barnes or possibly some other hybrid instrument invented by him, like the “sibanjar” or the “springocaster lap-slide” – invades otherwise dreamy tracks and can sound uncomfortably like a cat sharpening its claws on an aluminum scratching post. Henry’s mentorship and vision are important here, however. He feels indispensable. Unaccompanied by Carrie, Dylan’s vocals alone are sometimes as unintelligible as a Tom Waits tribute band’s lead singer after six Ambien. 'Strange Insistence' is a somewhat cautionary drug inventory (“Speed makes you a genius/Cocaine will make you rich/LSD shows you divinity/And everything’s alright on opiates”) capped with an Old Testament quote. It’s easy to picture Dylan isolated in a mountain retreat as he sings “Let me drink away the darkness of myself.” Thoughtful, artistic, creative people, young bohemians, and cowboy poets descending on tiny desert hamlets en masse sounds like an episode of Northern Exposure where every character is the laid-back philosophizing DJ Chris In The Morning and Gun Outfit provides the soundtrack. Maybe an overwhelming iconic landscape and mythology can only be fully appreciated by newcomers who haven’t seen and heard it all before.

Track Listing:-

1 Ontological Intercourse
2 Landscape Painter
3 Cybele
4 Strange Insistence
5 The 101
6 Slow Realization
7 Sally Rose
8 Three Words
9 Primacy of Love
10 Background Deal
11 Second Decade

Band Links:-

https://www.facebook.com/gunoutfit/
https://twitter.com/gunoutfit

Label Links:-

http://www.paradiseofbachelors.com/
https://www.facebook.com/ElParaisodelo
https://twitter.com/PofBachelors
https://www.youtube.com/user/PofBachel
https://plus.google.com/10479079114930
http://paradiseofbachelors.bandcamp.co