Review of ‘Nobody’s Coming To Save You’, the long-awaited Gurriers album
The republic of Ireland, a small country of less than five and a half million inhabitants, has for some time now become the great international quarry of rock, or guitar music – not counting some Kneecap who move along other sonic paths. You would have to go back to the golden era of cities like Manchester, New York or Seattle to find such a density of musical talent per inhabitant.
The bleeding contradictions of its economy have a lot to do with it, as they did in the post-industrial Manchester of 1978. Specifically, the capital Dublin, where, due to savage globalized capitalism, locals, and even less young people, can no longer live –does that sound familiar?–, while wealthy expatriates, technology companies with tax advantages, tourists and immigrants from half the world settle. With this panorama, the city continues to export musicians at a pace parallel to that of an economy that is increasingly dysfunctional for the average citizen.
Gurriers They are the penultimate additions to the list of discontents, and they hit the table with their second job. Like other contemporaries – The Murder Capital, Sprints, Fontaines DC who have achieved international stardom, etc. – the quintet draws on the murky sources of post-punk to launch their cry against the dystopian world that has one of its epicenters in that country. But also of the fallible universal human condition itself. They are those who prefer questions to sermons.
It is a strong, dark and dissonant album in just the right measure, which, like the best works of art, seems to arise from necessity. Mark Bowen (Idles), Loren Humphrey (Geese) and John Congleton (Swans, Death Cab For Cutie), form a formidable technical team, which makes the group shine from the album’s title track. “Party Lines”another brutal single, gives a new twist to the murky record that PIL and company patented, to denounce the inexhaustible hypocrisy of politicians.
The level does not decline in the rest. Gurriers They express the rich guitar tradition of their country, finding inspiration in the fundamental U2 – not the gentrified ones of today – or the influential cult band Whipping Boy, whose echoes have taken three decades to manifest. From the electrical voltage (“Shades”, “Waiting For Fisher”), to the sinuous guitars of “Pins”of the infinite tremolo and percussive guitars of “Today Is Not Enough” to suitably turbid environments of “Drones” or the melodic romanticism of “I Wish I Was”; of the cornered pop “Nothing Happens Twice” to the epilogue of “Crybaby”, everything works in this album of timeless rawness that is postulated as one of the most inspired of the year in terms of guitar music.
