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Plain and Fancy

Music gives soul to universe, wings to mind, flight to imagination, charm to sadness, and life to everything.

Plato

Friday, September 23, 2011

Gun - Gunsight (1969 uk, great hard rock, 2nd album, japan 2008 remaster)



The orchestral arrangements from the debut were gone on "Gunsight", resulting in a more basic and less intricate sound. The material was not of the same standard either, but still good enough to make the album a worthy encore to Gun's short career. The opener "Head in the Clouds" is probably the best song here, being a simple and straightforward hard rocker, but with a good melody and punch.

The partly acoustic blues of "Drown Yourself in the River" is less interesting, even when it powers up to a much more electric rocker in the middle. The strings on the ballad "Angeline" are the only remains of the orchestral arrangements from the debut. The hardest, most aggressive and noisiest track the band recorded comes in "Dreams and Screams" where Farrell hits the drums like it's the last thing he'll ever do in his life. "Situation Vacant" features interestingly enough a riff that Hawkwind later would borrow in "Sea of Holes" from their masterpiece "Warrior on the Edge of Time".

"Hobo" is a nice little pop tune with slight country and blues influences. The trio also went into pure folk-territory in the acoustic "Oh Lady You" that is sandwiched in between the two parts of the instrumental "Lady Link" where Adrian Curtis again delivers some flamenco-styled playing. The closer "Long Hair Wild Man" is basically a hard rocker with a pop melody and showed that the band perhaps was starting to occasionally be a bit dated and stagnated, especially when Led Zeppelin released their two first albums the same year. Still, Gun were far more interesting and sophisticated than most others of the many late 60's power trios. "Gunsight" is not a bad album at all, but be sure to start with the debut.


Tracks
1. Head in the clouds - 4:40
2. Drown yourself in the river - 2:56
3. Angeline - 5:36
4. Dreams and screams - 5:16
5. Situation vacant - 4:07
6. Hobo - 3:39
7. Lady link pt. 1 - 0:51
8. Oh lady you - 5:27
9 .Lady link pt. 2 - 0:38
10.Long hair wildman - 3:52

Gun
*Adrian Curtiss-Gurvitz - Guitar, Vocals
*Paul Curtiss-Gurvitz - Bass
*Louis Farrell - Drums

Gun 1st album 1968

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