“Why is the measure of love… loss?”- I can think of no better words to begin this particular review with than those once written by Jeanette Winterson. Perhaps I am merely being presumptuous in drawing a comparison between singer/songwriter Louisa Roach and a novelist whose body of work I am barely familiar with. Nevertheless, it seems to be the right association to make. But let us leave this business of comparisons alone, if only for the duration of this review at least.
She Drew The Gun is the brainchild of singer/songwriter Louisa Roach, it is a vehicle firstly for her music and secondly for collaborative projects: She Drew The Gun isn’t just about Roach’s evocative lyrics, its about the cover art, it’s about the whole cast of musicians supporting her.
There’s a community feeling about this recording, a real sense of direction. The music itself is provoking yet effortless, each song seems to take for it’s subject a moment of personal crisis, dealing sometimes with difficult themes. Take a song like “Time Machine”, probably the best song on here and one of Roach’s trickier melodies. Although the lyrics attend to fantasies of time travel at the heart of the song is the realization that because no one can travel back in time we are inevitably faced with the incomprehensibility of our mistakes. The lyrics hint at the possibility of change within the present moment.
“Chains” chimes with lyrical truth and boasts a catchy melody spread over the wonderful keyboard manoeuvres of Jez Wing. Wing’s backing vocals add a dream like atmosphere to this song whilst also lending a sense of drama to the lyrical content. The addition of breezy percussion on the third track and the suggestive lyrics on the last one fortify the latter half of the E.P, though the remaining impression is a sombre one. The only downside (perhaps limitation is a better word) is apparent in the lo-fi production values. Where it works, a lo-fi aesthetic is charming, where it doesn’t the experience is raw and discomfiting. Despite this apparent drawback, She Drew The Gun is a promising, verbose first effort.
Download SDTG EP Here
Connor May
