release date: 1993
format: cd
[album rate: 3 / 5] [3,18]
producer: Jeffrey Lee Pierce, Peer Rave
label: Solid Records - nationality: USA
Track highlights: 1. "Lucky Jim" - 2. "A House Is Not a Home" - 3. "Cry to Me" - 6. "Idiot Waltz" - 7. "Up Above the World" - 8. "Day Turn the Night"
7th and final studio album by The Gun Club follows one year after Pastoral Hide & Seek. Since then, the band has been reduced to a trio as Kid Congo Powers has left to pursue his own project-band, Congo Norvell. The trio then consists of Jeffrey Lee Pierce on vocals and guitar, Romi Mori on bass, and with Nick Sanderson on drums [who once again had been out, but returned]. The style hasn't evolved much since The Las Vegas Story from 1984 but as no-one else sounds quite like The Gun Club nor like Jeffrey Lee Pierce that's not really a bad thing. The garage rock and punk blues rawness has subsided and is here replaced by a stronger blues rock tone. Simplicity remains, and there's still an edgy tone and Pierce's fragile/desperate voice on top of all compositions. It's by no means poor or mediocre, I just miss that unspecified greatness, which is something else than melancholic despair.
Three years following this, Jeffrey Lee Pierce was found dead as a result of a life-style as a long-time heroin addict and with various deceases as side-effects.
[ allmusic.com 4 / 5 stars ]
