She Drew The Gun

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ALBUM: She Drew The Gun ‘Memories Of The Future’
Psych-pop band She Drew The Gun have been moving along nicely throughout 2016, and have been moving fast. The Mersey band were recently winners of Glastonbury Festival’s Emerging Talent competition, which will see them play a slot on one of the main stages at the world’s most prestigious musical gathering. As well as this, the release of the band’s debut album Memories Of The Future is on the horizon…

Opening track ‘Where I End and You Begin’ welcomes us to the album with a meagre amount of fuzz, which is then swiftly accompanied by the soothing vocals of Louisa Roach, the perfect complement to the listener. Even just a few tracks in, Memories Of The Future is filled with a huge array of different vibes, all contributing to one huge atmospheric flow.

This array of different vibes comes to life in tracks such as ‘Chains’, with its powerfully dark bass riff and a beat that transforms your mind into a haven, flowing beautifully alongside flawless vocals. The previous track ‘If You Can See’ is a dark psyche masterpiece, providing a groove which is heavy yet light at the same time – a lot of She Drew The Gun’s offerings can’t be described simply, which is part of what makes them so exciting.



Amongst the many different emotive consequences of the album, in the main it is soothing – the acoustic picking of ‘Pebbles’ cements this, which moulds the whole thing together naturally at its halfway point.

‘Sing’ keeps things flowing along on the same journey of peace and reflection until we reach ‘Poem’, undoubtedly one of the stand-out moments of this journey. ‘Poem’ is a brutally honest observation of society and the world in which we live; Roach sits back and weighs everything up, addresses one of many bottom lines in this life asking “Is making profit the sole aim of humanity? ” and pleads “Life give me something to believe in”. This one track could be analysed in immense detail; it’s a lyrical séance of huge proportion, and a beautiful one at that, leading you to think deeper than you’ve ever thought before.

As the album comes to an end, the pace is picked up significantly by the running of ‘Pit Pony’ – a more ‘poppy’ number, which suits She Drew The Gun well. Even towards its end, Memories Of The Future still impresses, throwing even more into the mix. The hooks are infectious, and the energy is huge. ‘Or So I Thought’ then brings you back down to earth gently, leaving you to dwell in the huge pool of feelings that have been conjured up throughout the album.

Memories Of The Future is set for release on 22 April via Skeleton Key Records.

James Cummins - Gigslutz

Its title taken from an observation by Billy Pilgrim, the protagonist of Kurt Vonnegut’s surreal anti-war novel Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) (‘Billy, with his memories of the future, knew that the city would be smashed to smithereens’) She Drew the Gun’s debut LP sees the group arrived on disc fully formed.

Initially the solo project of singer-songwriter Louisa Roach, the addition of guitarist Jack Turner, multi-instrumentalist Jenni Kickhefer and drummer Sian Monaghan, sees the trio draw Roach’s lyrical, emotive tracks on a larger canvas.

Placing Louisa’s beguiling voice at the centre of the proceedings, the cuts derive their power from spare elements of synthesized strings, repeated guitar figures and straightforward drum patterns, never overplaying its hand. Produced by The Coral’s James Skelly (whose label Skeleton Key is handling the release), the album wears its influences lightly (Portishead, Radiohead, Nina Simone, PJ Harvey) plaiting smoky jazz cellar atmospheres with the introspection of bedsit indie.

The tip-toeing What Will You Do has the same detached/intimate atmosphere of Dummy era Portishead, its Billy Holiday-esque vocal sounding like a transmission picked up from deep space, which alongside the woozy waltz of Sing and If You Could See are brilliantly effective modern day torch songs while the shuffling rhythm of musically bright/lyrically downbeat Chains brings some sunlight to the album.

Bringing some welcome grit to the oyster recent single Poem is a politically charged rush led by Roach’s half-sung half spoken vocal while the theremin embellished garage rock cut Pit Pony pays homage to 1950s inspired sci-fi and the soft acoustic patinas of the virtually solo Pebbles and the compellingly dark 3am distress call Be Mine seep into the brain deliciously.

The album’s peaks meanwhile, the gorgeous Since You Were Not Mine and the confessional Where I End and You Begin showcase the arrival of a songwriting talent well worth paying close attention to over the coming years. - Bearded Magazine

She Drew The Gun emerges in the form of Merseyside girl Louisa Roach and band. Louisa has been honing her craft for several years as a singer/songwriter has now come full circle with a band and released an exceptional debut album Memories Of The Future on the Coral’s frontman James Skelly’s record label Skeleton Key.
Bathed in sultry vocals and stripped back production, this is an immersive and compelling experience. Imagine a picnic under the stars with Portishead and Laura Marling and you have a good idea of where Roach is leading the listener.
Her versatile voice is filled with fragility and poignancy. At once it’s both distinctive and enticing. She’s invites you into her space and the music complements this in an intrinsic fashion. Roach’s vocals leave you hanging by the thread and its effect is one that is both hypnotising and invigorating.
Roach came to some people’s attention in 2015 when her performance for a local BBC introducing show was witnessed by a friend of James Skelley and as a result of this a friendship blossomed and a year later Memories of the Future is the product of that relationship.
Memories Of The Future simmers and bubbles away with deathly moody pluckings, stern bass lines, crisp beats and sonorous vocals. Throughout the album there is sense of lingering and opaque vibes that engulf the ears. Haunting lullaby Be Mine is a perfect example of this; lucid violin play is wrapped around with the enticing vocals of Roach. One of my highlights on the album.
There are plenty pleasing highlights on here. Pit Pong is a swirling and swooning segment that pricks up the eye brows. Opener Where I End And You Begin is downbeat but at the same time charming. Roach sings of how she has gone too far in a relationship and that its time to abandon ship, so to speak. She opens the proceedings in an imposing manner with shimmering antics being played behind that dreamy and celestial voice of hers.
The music on Memories Of The Future is deployed as a perfect foil for Roach’s vocal style. Arrangements echo Bat for lashes and Bic Runga. It works so well and means that Roach’s vocals shouldn’t receive all the praise here. The best and most accomplished example of this entangled and alluring chemistry is evident on Since You Were Not Mine. Symbols sooth, guitars caress and her voice aches with anticipation which has a delectable and irresistible effect.
Beneath the hushed arrangements and the poetic fluency of Roach’s lyrics there is also a cinematic scope to She Drew The Gun’s musings. Or So I Thought offers a different and intriguing side to their sound. The creepy presence of a moody organ fills a massive space which gradually builds before fading out gorgeously and ending this surprising and immersive treat for our ears.
This is proof that there is so much unsung talent out there in music landscape of today. She Drew The Gun’s talent shouldn’t go unnoticed and it’s great that artists like her are getting the opportunity to do what they love for a living and share it with the world. Definitely a highlight of 2016 so far. It will be interesting to see where Memories of the Future takes Roach and co… hopefully it won’t be ignored by the masses. - Popped Music

We live, my friends, in dark times. Government cuts hit hard, while those in charge seem unable to portray themselves as anything other than pocket-lining toffs or painfully old-fashioned dullards. Her Majesty’s Opposition is presided over by a well-meaning scruff who seems perpetually at risk from being ice-picked by his jealous parliamentary colleagues. Industrial strikes abound, wars of various sorts rage away in the Middle East, nationalist parties gain popularity, and to top all the fun, a sparklingly intelligent Democratic US president is on the verge of being replaced by an over-coiffured, dangerous Republican thicko. Hey, wait a minute. Haven’t we been here before? About... ooh... 36 years ago?

It’s true. 2016 is beginning to look amazingly like 1980. Are we, then, about to embark on a new 80s? Survivors have wildly contrasting views of that decade, but if there’s a generally accepted rule, it’s this: if you had money, you had a whale of a time. If you didn’t, you didn’t. This generated what sociologists sometimes call a “crunchy” atmosphere, with its serendipitous by-product: some brilliant, politically-charged pop music.

Think of it. The thriving post-punk drive of Crass and The Specials, the compelling, sophisticated leftism of The Jam and the Style Council, the spirited solo blast of Billy Bragg, the widescreen passion of U2 and Simple Minds, the anti-apartheid flag-waving of Peter Gabriel, the sharp, cut-the-crap synth bulletin-boards of Heaven 17 and New Order, the Clause 28-bashing romanticism of Erasure and The Communards. Benefit concerts (Anti-Nazi League, CND, gay rights, Live Aid) abounded. And, maybe the greatest cultural gift Maggie Thatcher ever gave to the world (aside from perhaps Spitting Image): The Smiths. Although I struggle to think of any blatantly political Smiths songs, their whole vibe, and accompanying interviews, were thoroughly, and sometimes aggressively, anti-establishment.


So, tortured-artist theory and all that, I don’t think I’m being unduly optimistic to expect some new bands in 2016 to start wearing their political colours a little more flagrantly. Political rock comes in two flavours. The first I’ll call politically driven: the raison d’être for the entire enterprise being to comment on social issues and loudly complain about stuff. Correct me if I’m wrong, but there isn’t a whole lot of this about at the moment; the best example I’ve encountered is Leicester’s Grace Petrie, whose Frank Turner-esque socialist anthems are deservedly packing clubs and Labour rallies all over the place. The second, and a subtle differentiation, is politically charged, where the lyrical focus is smaller-scale, but the anger and frustration with the bigger picture boil beneath the surface. To this latter category we can confidently add She Drew The Gun, poised to release their debut album, Memories Of The Future, on The Coral’s indie label Skeleton Key. We of the Fink clan know the band well as they accompanied us on our most recent hike around Europe, but there are rapidly dwindling reasons why the rest of the planet shouldn’t know them, now, too.

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She Drew The Gun. Pic by Keith Ainsworth

The band’s songwriter and singer Louisa Roach is the sort of poet you don’t come across very often, specialising in a dreamlike, road-less-travelled approach to storytelling, slotting in perfectly with the Kurt Vonnegut-inspired album title. Take, for example, the record’s third track If You Could See. Rather than writing a simple stream of complaints and angry observations, Roach has composed what she calls a “sci-fi protest song” in which a frustrated protagonist - “choking on headlines“ - manages to strike up an exchange with a future being, from whose vantage point things are looking decidedly grim. “If I could show you my view,” warns future-person, “you would pick up the fight now.” “They’re sending a message,” says Roach, “that we’ve got to stop enjoying ourselves the whole time and try to change things, or it’ll be too late.” Indeed. Frivolity in the face of impending doom is also explored in current single Poem, depicting - among other things - a homeless person being removed from a city’s tourist district: “It’s not enough to just pretend you don’t see him / you can’t stand the sight so you have to disappear him / well I hope you feel more comfortable doing your sightseeing / taking pictures, buying fucking Union Jack magnets and keyrings“. Listening to She Drew The Gun is an exercise in having your darkest social rages voiced accurately and eloquently.

But if you presume these sonnets of fury will be set to a similarly furious noise, that’s where She Drew The Gun’s second surprise hits. The band - Roach and Jack Turner providing the various guitars, Siân Monaghan on drums and Jenni Kickhefer on keys - create a quietly buzzing, cinematic pop, owing more to Portishead, Cocteau Twins and the quieter end of Radiohead than it does to the Clashes and Pistols of this world. It helps, of course, when your singer possesses as expressively soulful and listenable a voice as Roach does. None of which must have harmed the band’s chances in the Glastonbury Emerging Talent competition, which they recently won after a nail-biting slot in the Pilton local boozer in front of Michael Eavis and chums.

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The band with some bearded dude.

“He [Eavis] said he knew we’d win as soon as he saw us,” Roach laughs, still in state of mild disbelief. “He came up to us straight after we played, and we told him we’d already bought a ticket for Glastonbury... he said, ‘well, you needn’t have done that’!” They’ll now be walking in the shoes of previous winners The Subways and Stornoway with a set on one of the main stages, expected to be the John Peel Stage on the Sunday. Perfect.

But back to the album. Pit Pony: a vicious attack on the culture of greed set to a bracing Teutonic beat. Since You Were Not Mine: a frustration-sated, Motown-infused list of the mundane events that have occurred since the departure of a lover (a reversal of the lyrical theme of ABBA’s The Day Before You Came, in effect). A perfectly-timed, yearning ballad (Pebbles), a gloriously subtle and quietly barbed pop song (Chains), a spaced-out bluesy number (Be Mine) and - most remarkably - a rant from the sober self directed at the drunk one (“that’s the last time you’re making a fool of me / I’m not gonna let you back in) entitled Where I End And You Begin.

Having a precociously perfect grasp of the pop song’s symmetry and a lyrical slant that mixes venom, politics, romance and playfulness, and being from Liverpool, it won’t come as a huge shock to learn that they’re Lennon fans. “He’s the perfect model of a songwriter for me,” Louisa says. “Not every song was political, but when he did one it was always spot on. He wrote about every side of life - he could write a love song just as easy as when he was trying to get a message across, like Instant Karma or God, or even feminist anthems like Woman Is The Nigger Of The World.”

But whatever the topic, the band also seem to share Lennon’s sense - at least where his songwriting was concerned - of balance, place, and justice. A track like Poem, lauded a couple of weeks ago on Steve Lamacq’s BBC 6 Music review section Roundtable, voices a clutch of questions only a money-grabbing arse would dismiss: “Can I suggest you’re seeing exactly what they want you to see? / a monster, a cancer, a threat to your liberty“ and “Is profit the sole aim of humanity?“ - concluding sadly that “we’re working for a market that doesn’t work for we“.

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She Drew The Gun live, somewhere in Austria. I took this photo which is why it’s so good

If all this sounds a tad po-faced, the good news is that She Drew The Gun are a real band and a complete laugh to hang out with, and this somehow also manages to come across in the music. Live, their sound is accompanied by thought-provoking visuals designed by Roach herself, and as earnest as some of her lyrics might be, she still sounds like someone you could sit down and have a pint with. Or several, as we discovered on the tour, where she and the team embarked on such prodigious boozing they earned the nickname She Drank The Rider (not our finest piece of wit, but hey, it was a long tour). For us, it’s a total delight to see them being excited recipients of the fabled “music industry buzz”, which I can’t imagine calming down anytime soon. “There’s a momentum now - a spark,” says guitarist/bassist Jack Turner of their progress. “But you still get the fear that only 10 people are gonna show up at the gigs.”

One thing’s for damn sure: they’ll be 10 very happy people.

Memories Of The Future is out on April 22, on which date their nationwide headline tour also starts.

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Merseyside act She Drew The Gun have won Glastonbury‘s Emerging Talent Competition, coming out on top of the live finale on Saturday night (April 9) in Pilton.

The four-piece saw off competition from thousands of other acts in the free-to-enter annual contest, which took entries in January. The longlist of 120 was whittled down to eight by a panel of music writers before the final shortlist of artists performed at Saturday night’s final showcase. The final judging panel included festival organiser Emily Eavis.

The prize is a slot on one of Glastonbury’s main stages – which one is to be confirmed – and £5,000 to help with the band’s development.

On their website, She Drew The Gun describe themselves as “dreamy lyrical psych-pop from the banks of the Mersey.”

The site continues “[We] have just announced an April release for debut Album, Memories of the Future, the record is the result of Louisa Roach meeting with James Skelly in 2015. Introduced by a friend who heard her doing a live session for the local BBC introducing show, he liked what he heard and initial work on an EP became an album.”

“Going into the studio with the bare bones of the songs- poetic autobiographical lyrics set to haunting riffs and melodies – they built up the tracks, developing an electronic element into Roach’s sound. The result is a dark but dreamlike collection of stories from Roach’s life and imagination caught in a bubble of psych-tinged pop.”

After winning, the band said they were “really buzzing,” and asked “did that really happen?”

Watch the band’s performance in the competition final via Glastonbury’s YouTube account, below:


You can listen to Michael Eavis announcing the winner via Soundcloud, as well as hearing the band speaking briefly about the competition, below:



Glasgow R&B act Bossy Love came second in the contest, with London folk act Hattie Whitehead finishing in third. Both acts will be given a £2,500 talent development prize.

Previous Emerging Talent Competition entrants include hotly-tipped R&B singer Izzy Bizu (a 2016 BRITs Critics’ Choice and BBC Sound Of 2016 nominee) and fast-rising young rapper Isaiah Dreads. Last year’s winner was singer-songwriter Declan McKenna, who has since signed a management deal with Q Prime, who also manage Metallica, Muse and Foals.



Read more at http://www.nme.com/news/music/nme-203-1190055#eZPKW1KYHz7vjiwc.99 - The NME