Smile (ger)
Gun-shy
With their second album, *Gun-Shy*, the US-German noise-rock band SMILE captures the energy of their live performances on record. Anyone who has seen the bandwhose members now reside in Amsterdam, Berlin, and Colognelive will be familiar with the unbridled stage presence of singer and performer Rubee Fegan. On *Gun-Shy*, with the help of producer Olaf Opal, the band has succeeded in bottling that very intensity, preserving the raw, immediate nature of its creation: clamorous guitars collide with haunting melodies, while Fegan's voice oscillates between urgency and vulnerability. It is precisely from these contrasts that the album derives its dynamic. SMILE delivers punk, noise, and beat-driven narratives about a rough, unvarnished realitydressed in post-rock drag, masked with animal heads, heavy eyeliner, fishnet stockings, and vibrant pink, all cradled by siren-like guitars. These children of the ninetiessteeped in both art and musiccite influences ranging from Fugazi, Slint, Cindy Lee, Women, Life Without Buildings, Sonic Youth, and Moin to Aleister Crowley. They grew up on Limewire, low-quality MP3s, and band T-shirts, hailing from small towns where the local youth club reigned supremeproviding the oxygen and the platform to perform and form bands. The five members found each other within Cologne's DIY punk scene. "The DIY scene means making music with your friendsa space where anyone can participate," says Max, the band's bassist. Anti-establishment and anti-marketing, this band prioritizes music over "content." For them, music means stepping away from the screen and into the room. This album undoubtedly feels like a journeyone where the listener gazes out the window of a steam-powered train carriage at the passing landscape: loud and garish, at times bleakfilled with burnt-out cars, clattering trash cans, and biting basslinesyet occasionally taking a campy, glittery turn. They recorded the album with Olaf Opal, known, among other things, for his work on the earlier, punkier, and rawer records by The Notwist.