Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Only the more seasoned music lovers will truly remember the sheer exuberance the body and soul felt when they first came across seminal British band The Who, those of us who came to hear and love the foursome afterwards, perhaps what may be considered long after the fact can only guess, hopefully perceive, what it meant to have such a group join the ranks of 60s British luminaries as The Beatles, The Kinks, The Small Faces and The Rolling Stones.
There have been pretenders to the throne before, the internal wrangling of musicians trying to capture the sound, but failing to embody the energy and destruction, the sheer beautiful excessive anarchy that went into each performance and after show procedure. It is blessing and a curse that nobody till now has really come close, it has made listening to The Who a more bountiful experience.
Many have attempted, but nobody really till now has come close, and yet out of Alabama’s Birmingham, a sense of new liberation can be found to be foraging amongst the weight of expectancy, it is a sound that wants to be heard, a new generation was always going to try and emulate it, at least with Holiday Gunfire they acknowledge what was and see to it that they can put their own sense of self firmly beneath the songs, a new stamp that is worth its own congratulations.
That is not to say the sound is completely immersed in the feeling of post war Britain and on the eve of the 60s revolution, far from it, this is a set of explosive figures with its own identity, one where the leftover craters and world war weary capital is replaced by the fireworks and unrestrained muscle, the celebration of a southern brainchild. Where the two meet is in the unrelenting exuberance, the oiling of the machine as it gets ready to storm the stage and the ears of the listener.
This is evident in the songs Aviator Saint, Out To Sea, the excellent Imaginary Friend and She’s Got A Machine, a sense of heat, blistering, damaging, played with intent that circles the surroundings like the rings of Saturn as they reflect like diamonds in the open galaxy.
This is the rough end of the smooth polish, a place in which the West End of London meets the southern tips of a far-off shore, Holiday Gunfire never sounded as good a celebration as this.
Holiday Gunfire release their self-titled album on February 15th via Cornelius Chapel Records.
Ian D. Hall