Music
Press
Rock Sound - “Oxford-based indie kids take care of the wizardry, combining math-rock time signatures, intricate guitar / bass tapestries and a rip-roaring vocal that swoops above the virtuoso sonics like a musical trapeze artist.” 8/10
The Fly - “these songs are emotions transformed into technicalities, love and loss and sadness and insecurity translated into complex time signatures that are arrhythmic yet soothing, mathematical but moving.” 3/5
Kerrang - “When This Town Needs Gun hit their mark they sound stylish, sussed and like reformed mathcore men Minus The Bear covering seminal Mancunian miserablists The Smiths.”
AbsolutePunk.net - “Study Animals with the diligence it deserves and you’ll walk away with a knowledge you never expected.” 80%
3BarFire.com - “The band make music that is so accessible with the kind of straight up indie structure, yet the instrumentation is of the highest and most complex technicality which makes it truly stand out.”
ClashMusic.com - “This Town Needs Guns deliver accessibility marked ‘avant-rock’, their Minus The Bear/Foals-recalling material blessed by charm and character singular while echoing enough established work to warrant repeated investigations, as layers are peeled and sweetness bleeds from the gaps between the fret-taps.”
ClickMusic.co.uk - “A good album and a major talent”
TheLineOfBestFit.com - “This Town Needs Guns have delivered one of the most accomplished records of twiddly un-genre-label-ifying music to date” 80%
NewNoise.net - “To give amateurs an idea, they’re in the same brains-on-sleeves mould as the aforementioned Foals, using the same basic template to make music, but TTNG are much more inscrutable and perplexing, like a math-rock yin-yang.”
NoiseMakesEnemies.com - “On the whole, This Town Needs Guns showcase on ‘Animals’ how the combination of guitars, drums, bass and vocals can be used, without harmonies or overdubs, to fashion an album that is both delicate and raw.” - Various
Discography
Hippy Jam Fest / Denial Adams - single 06, digital download itunes BSM
I'll tell you for Why / Belle & Sebastian - 06 digital download BSM
Cats x3 split EP - 2007, 1000 pressing - sold out BSM
Japanese back catalogue release
Australia back catalogue release
Animals album release oct 2008 UK release BSM
Animals album release april 2009 US Sargent House
Animals album release 2010 Japan
US radio airplay figures available upon request
High UK radio plays on XFM, Radio 1, Radio 6, various regioanl
Photos
Bio
Oxford is home to the oldest University in the English-speaking world, but more recently has been acknowledged as a musical hotbed with a habit of producing some of the most vital bands around today (Radiohead and Foals, to name a few). Their latest export is This Town Needs Guns, a band being hailed as the darling buds of the thriving UK indie scene. The band have toured across Europe with the likes of I Was A Cub Scout, Meet Me In St Louis, Rolo Tomassi and Maps & Atlases and the release of 2007's split EP with Cats And Cats And Cats garnered critical acclaim from fans and press alike.
This Town Needs Guns entered the studio in April 2008, setting out to find an intricate balance between indie rock, catchy pop and technical prowess, all while ignoring the lure of special effects and studio wizardry. Through this process, their debut full-length Animals was born; a collection of songs that bring to light the band’s pure, clever and earnest song writing ability. Tim Collis' guitar sounds as though it's being caressed by 6 hands as his brother, Chris, flings his sticks around the drum kit not wanting to leave any tiny patch un-touched. Bassist Dan Adams completes the rhythm section with his dancey, jazz influenced bass lines while Stuart Smith's vocals dip and soar, taking this record from thought provoking depths to sky-scraping triumphs.
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