Title:        Gun Club Takes Another Shot, but New Lineup Is Not Quite on Target
Author:       Duncan Strauss
Source:       The Los Angeles Times
Date:         April 12, 1988


Proving you can't keep a good band down, the Gun Club--noted for
changing musicians more often than UCLA goes through basketball
coaches--has emerged after a 3-year hiatus with its surest lineup yet.

This year's model--singer-front man Jeffrey Lee Pierce, guitarist Kid
Congo Powers, bassist Romi Mori and drummer Nick Sanderson--is capable
of generating a more focused fury in rendering the band's menacing
kitchen-sink rock than past lineups.

Playing Saturday at Night Moves in Huntington Beach, though, the Gun
Club showed that applying more skill and sinewy force to its sprawling
musical mixture doesn't necessarily keep the performance from being a
mixed bag. The foursome covered considerable ground, often navigating
through that furious country-blues swampland Pierce staked out years
ago.

But the always mercurial outfit also seemed to be flitting from style
to style as it served up new songs ranging from the gliding,
atmospheric "Yellow Eyes" to the barreling sonic train "Bill
Bailey"--both from the recent "Mother Juno" LP--and leaped back a few
years for such noggin-rattling rave-ups as "Sex Beat."

It could  have been a fully stirring, truly triumphant evening.

But the new Gun Club was dogged by the unevenness that often plagued
the old Gun Club--and Pierce seemed oddly disconnected from the
proceedings. He sang with his usual quivery passion, but he's far more
subdued on stage these days and one of the few times he spoke to the
audience was to acknowledge that he'd started in on the wrong song.

Everything just seemed a little off  Saturday, despite some fine new
material and a strong new lineup.

Maybe it was just an off night?


© The Times Mirror Company; Los Angeles Times 1988


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