Review & Track Premiere: Shooting Guns, Flavour Country
Posted in audiObelisk, Reviews on July 21st, 2017 by JJ Koczan
[Click play above to stream the premiere of ‘Flavour Country’ by Shooting Guns. Flavour Country is out Aug. 11 via RidingEasy Records and available to preorder here. You can also hear “French Safe” at the bottom of this post.]
There are no words on Shooting Guns‘ Flavour Country except for a sample at the beginning of the penultimate title-track from Richard Linklater’s 1991 film, Slacker. An interviewer asks someone what it would take for them to get a job, and the answer comes back, “Hey, I’ll get a job when I hear the true call,” and it goes on from that point: “To all you workers out there: Every single commodity you produce is a piece of your own death.” Beyond that, the Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, outfit’s self-recorded third album and first for RidingEasy Records — with a noteworthy mastering job by former Monster Magnet and Wellwater Conspiracy guitarist John McBain (see also: Kandodo/McBain and Carlton Melton) — is completely instrumental. It would be hard to overstate the effect that single 30-second stretch has on the listener.
Taken as the beginning of a side-B comprised only of the title-track and languid, lumbering LP-closer “Black Leather Jacket,” each of which tops eight minutes on its own, the sample acts as a defining moment in terms of attitude and perspective for the six-piece, who in addition to the 2011 debut Born To Deal In Magic: 1952-1976 and 2013 Brotherhood of the Ram LPs put together the soundtrack for the Netflix film WolfCop in 2014 and have had a slew of short releases out, most recently 2015’s Himalaya to Mesopotamia split with fellow Canadian ritualists Zaum (review here). Imagine you get to say one thing on your record. One thing. You say “fuck work.” That’s kind of what’s happening here, and it aligns Shooting Guns to a dropped-out-of-life heavy hippiedom in which the space-rocking push of opener “Ride Free” and the drone-backed pastoral drift of “Vampires of Industry” feel equally at home.
Fluidity is the core impression. Liquefaction. Shooting Guns, who list their lineup with seven members (Keef, Laramee, Jay Loos, Jim Ginther, Toby Bond, Zach Low and Brennan Barclay despite showing six on the cover of Flavour Country, commence “Ride Free” with a simple riff and a faded in second guitar behind before the Hawkwindy thrust begins in earnest, giving an almost grunge-style impression in its first couple measures that winds up subtly showing the shared roots of space rock and punk in straight-ahead attitude. The difference is punk goes to ground while space rock goes far out, and Shooting Guns will wind up doing a bit of both and then some as Flavour Country runs through its six tracks/34 minutes, holding fast to an unpretentious throb while realizing moods from across a swath of headphone-ready heavy psychedelia and doom, malleable in style and tempo but keeping its course on an overarching cosmic trajectory. Dudes trip. Off they go. Whoosh and swirl. Sweep and churn and a bit of plod.
If one is listening to the CD or digital version of Flavour Country — something linear, rather than the vinyl requiring the side-A-to-B flip — it makes sense to break the album down into thirds. The first, made up of “Ride Free” and the subsequent “French Safe,” is the shortest at barely over five minutes between the two tracks, and “French Safe” (1:42) proves even faster and more raw-motor-punk than the opener before it. There’s still some noise and effects swirl behind, but it’s almost as though Shooting Guns are engaging the boosters that will carry them out of the atmosphere as a means of immersing their audience in the rest of the record to come.
Perhaps on that level it’s somewhat ironic that “Beltwhip Snakecharmer” and “Vampires of Industry,” the two six-minutes-each cuts that follow, are so earthy in their overall vibe. Earthy and Earth-y, actually, with “Beltwhip Snakecharmer” providing a dreamed-out hypnotic nod into a quickly-executed apex en route toward the more drone-informed ambience of “Vampires of Industry,” which is a serene and patient highlight of Flavour Country as a whole and effective transition point to set up the aforementioned sample at the intro to the title-track, quieting the proceedings and the mind before Shooting Guns deliver what would seem to be the core message behind the work they’re doing throughout.
And who could disagree? “Look at me,” say the character’s opening lines as cars pass behind, “I’m making it. I may live badly, but at least I don’t have to work to do it.” Feedback rises from beneath that sample and leads into the sludgy stomp of “Flavour Country” itself, the name of the song and album derived from cigarette ads and the tonal buzz ensuing suitably dried-leaf-brown in color. Guitar leads careen atop the core riff in a melodic semi-wash, but it’s the slow groove that’s central to the piece as it marches to its even-noisier crescendo, sounding all the more live-tracked and maybe even improv-based as the drums cut out for a final 30-seconds or so of feedback and amp hum that fades out to let “Black Leather Jacket”‘s stage-setting intro riff begin clean.
The closer is the longest piece on Flavour Country at 8:36 and consistent with the two-songs-as-thirds model, it rounds out the last movement of the album following suit from the title-track’s lumber before it. But it’s even slower, and despite being only about 20 seconds longer than “Flavour Country,” feels more purposefully drawn out, giving way similarly to noise after the seven-minute mark but bringing the drums back for an additional few measures of crash before they stop again and the noise fades quickly to end the record. This final section of Flavour Country, after the kosmiche opening salvo of “Ride Free” and “French Safe” and the trip across the Canadian prairie in “Beltwhip Snakecharmer” and “Vampires of Industry,” is heavier and more doomed, but it underscores the breadth Shooting Guns bring to their material.
If they’re ending on a somewhat sinister note, it’s a considerable journey Shooting Guns take to get there, and perhaps that sonic pilgrimage is itself the alternative the band are offering to the standard, commodity-making death of living in a capitalist system. Maybe that’s reading too much into it, but even if so, it’s a worthy achievement of evocation on the part of the group in putting their audience in that frame of mind, and all the more admirable on the level of both asking a question and answering it. Quit your job. Eat mushrooms. Trade one reality for another. It’s a quick listen, and no doubt it will fly under the radar for many, but Flavour Country‘s resonance makes righteous fodder for multiple repeat visits, and those who take it on with an open mind will be all the more engrossed. Right fucking on.
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