The Gun Club

Reissues

CookiNG ViNyl Swampy, scummy, beautiful, Jeffrey Lee Pierce’s Gun Club sung and lived the blues. The Gun Club were formed by Jeffrey Lee Pierce (former head of the Blondie fan club) in 1980, and their music merged several genres – 80s LA punk rock, country and Americana roots – with a dissolute grace that was hard to match. Contemporaries of, and an influence on, both the Bad Seeds and The Cramps (guitarist Kid ‘Congo’ Powers later joined both bands), their wailing, drawling template has gone on to inspire numerous garage rock bands, notably the White Stripes (Jack White reasonably asks: “Why are these songs not taught in schools?”).

Reissued on limited-edition orange vinyl, Mother Juno (9/10) is the band’s seminal fourth album, with Powers and Pierce both at the top of their considerable game, drawling and crawling the gutters and empty

desert spaces, wailing and bewailing their lives with a magnificently louche touch. Check the slinky, inebriated Yellow Eyes for proof.

The double live set from

1992, Ahmed’s Wild Dream and the seventh and final album, 1993’s Lucky Jim (blue vinyl) are both damn rockin’ too

(both 7/10), touched with a desperation that gives the music an added edge.

Tragically, Pierce died from a brain haemorrhage at the age of 37 in 1996. But what a legacy.