Smile - Gun-Shy Smile
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Usually ready in 2-4 days
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Oxford or Witney
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OX1-OX4 postcode
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With their second album, Gun-Shy, the US-German noise-rock band SMILE captures the energy of their live performances on record. Anyone who has seen the band whose members now reside in Amsterdam, Berlin, and Cologne live will be familiar with the unbridled stage presence of singer and performer Rubee Fegan. On Gun-Shy, with the help of producer Olaf Opal, the band has succeeded in bottling that very intensity, preserving the raw, immediate nature of its creation: clamorous guitars collide with haunting melodies, while Fegan's voice oscillates between urgency and vulnerability.
It is precisely from these contrasts that the album derives its dynamic. SMILE delivers punk, noise, and beat-driven narratives about a rough, unvarnished reality dressed in post-rock drag, masked with animal heads, heavy eyeliner, fishnet stockings, and vibrant pink, all cradled by siren-like guitars. These art-and-music kids of the nineties cite influences such as Fugazi, Slint, Cindy Lee, Women, Life Without Buildings, Sonic Youth, Moin, and Aleister Crowley.
They grew up in the era of Limewire, low-quality MP3s, and band T-shirts, hailing from small towns where the local youth club reigned supreme providing the oxygen and the platform to perform and form bands. The five members found one another within the DIY punk scene in Cologne. "The DIY scene means making music with your friends a space where anyone can participate," says Max, the band's bassist. Anti-establishment and anti-marketing, this band prioritizes music over content. For them, music means stepping away from the screen and entering a shared physical space.
This album undoubtedly feels like a journey one where the listener gazes out the window of a steam-powered train carriage at the passing landscape: loud and garish, at times bleak filled with burnt-out cars, clattering trash cans, and biting basslines yet occasionally taking a campy, glittery turn. It was recorded with Olaf Opal, a.m.o., known for his work on The Notwist's earlier, punkier, and rawer albums.
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