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Concert Tue Jan 08 2008
Aww. . .Don't Be Shy
Were it not for the Gunshy, I would probably never understand the term “concept album”. To me, any album that is more than just a collection of songs and that strives to be singular in construction, like a symphony with multiple movements, is a concept album. Doesn’t that describe infinite releases, thereby rendering the term inconsequential? Perhaps. Except that the Gunshy have actually crafted the truest form of a concept album. For their fourth album, There’s No Love in This War (available from Latest Flame), they’ve taken a particular conceit (the seventeen letters that Matt Arbogast’s grandfather wrote his grandmother from 1943 to 1945, while knee deep in World War II), to craft a full story with living and breathing characters, that speaks of war and guilt and silence and love. The music is gritty, with a gravel-road country vibe that reflects the violence inherent in the material, but there’s still a soft underbelly, a touch of elegiac horns and elegant strings weaving in and out.
While Arbogast’s voice resembles Tom Waits so much that I wonder if he’s doing an impression or just really likes coffee and cigarettes, what really gives this material resonance is that he’s not just telling someone else’s tale. The letters tell Matt’s life too, his history, and they mirror his own fear and uncertainty, of war and of death, in a way that is sincere without being ironic and serious without being heavy-handed.
On Wednesday, the Gunshy return to the Empty Bottle at 9pm, after a performing absence of nearly three years. The Readysuits play first followed by buoyant, off-kilter pop group Bedtime, both making their Bottle debut. Tickets are a scant $7.
