Usually bands send us a three or four track demo to sample their sound, so the My Gun Is Quick project took me a little by surprise - because there's a whopping 20 songs! To be honest, you could hack that down to 8 killer tracks and you'd have a very, very impressive mini album indeed, but as you read in the sleeve notes, head honcho Steven Ferguson just wanted to release everything and...well, here it all is! The 20 songs are really split into two parts, roughly half and half acoustic musings to a more cliched electric post-hardcore sound. I like lazy comparisons, so it's like comparing The Lyndsay Diaries to a band like Halifax. Needless to say, the songs that sound like the former are so, so much better than those that sound like the latter.
While the vocals flicker between being stretched and wonderfully sublime - and of course there's always a hint of Dashboard in the song structures (and their names - see 'The Cleverest Deception' as an example) - there's a sense that MGIQ actually possess a little talent. 'When The TV's On' is a three-minute gem, as is 'In Ambulance', which reminds me a lot of The Lyndsay Diaries. And that, ladies and gents, is a good thing. 'Birth and Death' is a decent stab at the full band thing, complete with female vocals, while 'Drunk Enough To Drive Us Home' sounds really warm and tender. 'The Static Signals' is really, really nice too.
However, the relative youth and inexperience in the song-writing leads to some horrible generic tracks, like 'The Cleverest Deception' and the full band 'In Car Crash' which could be a mere copy of any of a million modern post-hardcore bands. Releasing two separate EPs under different names would have been a better option I think, as the electric songs aren't as good as those which are stripped down. Personally I'd stick to the acoustic stuff because it shows plenty of talent. Quit listening to Bright Eyes and take your own path and I think we could have a bright new talent on our hands.
www.myspace.com/mygunisquick1
Paul
