She Drew The Gun
Having recently received praise from Steve Lamacq and with a full European tour on the horizon, Getintothis’ Chris Hughes listens to She Drew The Gun’s new track to see what all the fuss is about.
When The Coral’s James Skelly invites you to record in his studio after a first meeting, you know you must be onto something good. So is the case of songwriter Louisa Roach, who was spotted by Skelly after making a name for herself on the Liverpool acoustic night circuit.
Keen to avoid being filed into the generic singer/songwriter with an acoustic guitar category, she took on the moniker She Drew the Gun, and the project has since evolved into a full band line-up. High praise on the national front has followed, with Steve Lamacq declaring he’s ‘very excited about the potential of this band’. But rather than pop under the pressure, they’ve evolved their sound to higher level than ever before.
Following on from earlier-2015 release Since You Were Not Mine, is Where I End And You Begin, which Roach calls an ode to ‘one too many nights of waking up with no memory of but lots of stories of me behaving like an idiot’. It’s a true to life experience that is reflective of her lyrics, everyday stories wrapped in bubbles of dream-pop.
Read our review of She Drew The Gun’s gig with Jolie Holland at Leaf
Opening with a chugging bass line that is perfectly complemented by a lazy-afternoon beat, Roach’s vocals are not unlike those of fellow pop-dreamer La Roux, delicate and airy with bared teeth that threaten to bite at any moment. Whimsically declaring ‘that’s the last time you’re making a fool of me/ I’m not gonna let you back in’, the chorus invites us to view the world through the bands own hazy vision. It’s a track that really epitomises their description as ‘like Laura Marling and Portishead at a mushroom tea party’, swirling orchestral synth lifting the track to an ethereal headspace. It’s also not a million miles away from Amy Winehouse’s ‘Frank’-era tracks, both in terms of storytelling and I’m-strong-enough-to-stand-on-my-own-two-feet attitude.
Complemented by percussionist Sian Monahan, Jack Turner and Jenni Kickhefer, the quartet are currently embarking on a European tour with song writing producer Fink, a veteran of the dub-folk scene. With UK support dates coming up at Academy2 Manchester and Bexhill-On-Sea’s De La Warr Pavilion, followed by European dates across The Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and beyond, it won’t be long before more listeners are drifting along She Drew The Gun’s river of dream-pop.
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