REVIEW: BRING BACK THE GUNS - DRY FUTURES

It's not a mistake, or if so it is fortuitous, that the opening track to Bring Back the Guns' years-in-the-making debut, the minute and a half screamer 'No More Good Songs,' starts things the way it does. The opening drum hits, combining the impatient clang of a cell-block cup and plate protest chant with the pent-up stomp of an angry bull, signal that this record is a beast that has been waiting to get out the gates for too too long. In drop percussive scrapes of guitar clawing at the latch and the lock. And with bass and vocals, it is rocketing. By the time a voice shrieks the line "IT'S A LIST OF THINGS GONE WRONG!" you can't help but wondering if that extra bit of spit behind it isn't a reference to the tumults and summersaults involved in getting the album complete (well documented by the Houston Press in their review of the record).

In return for all the wait and the wonder, this album repays with weight. Dry Futures changes parts, tempos and timing like Girl Talk does samples, dropping snarling ear-sticking hooks in and out of the arrangement just at the moment they wet your appetite, often never to be heard again until you hit the rewind button. The dedication to irregular numerology and tightness that this collection of 11 bangers exhibits would make a carpenter’s square envious, while not a moment of even verges on mathy. We remember once hearing about how the Guns wanted to write pop songs that were challenging and smart. This is a dumb statement because pop songs are pop songs in no small part because they are dumb and easy. That was a dumb belief because Dry Futures shows how to do just that.

By stringing together an avalanche of chicken-nugget sized straight-ahead guitar, drum and bass parts, some of them completely thrown away (seriously – ride some of these riffs out for a while. Oh hell forget it, you know what you’re doing), the LP begs to differ with your attempt to sing or hum along, and yet still manages to pump your cortex full of more highlights than a Timberlake album. Even when the pace slows down a bit, and you’re riding a candy-railed toboggan across a frozen lake instead of down a craggy cliff, the ice below is perilously thin, and is a boot stomp away from dumping you into a frantic lake of sharks and piss. Nearly every track ends as unexpectedly as a roll of toilet paper, and is followed up immediately with a new direction as refreshing as finding a replacement under the sink.

And even setting aside the craftsmanship of the arrangements, the production is Cadbury rich. The drums shake; the guitars cut; the bass pulses. This is a great record both to listen to and to listen to.

Dry Futures has been available in stores since its retail release on Tuesday, and should be available online from iTunes and Emusic today, or, in person at Bring Back the Gun's record release party tonight, with headliners The Octopus Project and opening act Satin Hooks. It is records like this from bands like this why The Skyline Network exists in the first place. If you’re not into this LP, you should be wary that you might be headed on a path to becoming the sort of music listener who will eventually spend their evenings hitting refresh on perezhilton.com while dry humping their cat.

It should not be overlooked that in the time it took for this record to be written, recorded, re-recorded and now released, locally focused online music coverage has grown to over half a dozen distinct outlets, glossies like Envy and 002 have started paying attention and a number of record labels of varying ambition have added to a solid self-release output that is impossible to keep up with (just ask our inbox). If there ever was a State of the Union for this scene, this would be the record; and the state of the Union is strong. Recommended.

MP3: Bring Back the Guns - In Piles/On File