Shotgun Sawyer – Shotgun Sawyer
Release Date: 6th December 2024
Label: Ripple Music
Bandcamp
Genre: Raw Delta Blues, Rock n’ Roll.
FFO: Allman Brothers, Howlin’ Wolf, Elmore James, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Led Zeppelin.
Review By: Paul Franklin
The people behind the new remake of the movie Roadhouse made a mistake (well apart from casting Connor ‘one facial expression’ McGregor) and that was not hiring Shotgun Sawyer as the house band in the bar. After listening to this, their self-titled third album, it’s difficult to imagine that there could be a better soundtrack to be played in a spit and sawdust saloon filled with several dozen rednecks all gleefully punching each other in the face.
This threesome from small town California play feral rock and blues music, the kind that bypasses all notions of social politeness and ignites those primal urges that linger somewhere deep down in your loins. Just take Bye Bye Baby Boogie, which grabs you by the hand and flings you round the dance floor in a spirited jive, before pulling you in tight and grinding its hot crotch up and down your thigh.
With music this stripped back and raw your influences are bound to show through, and in the case of Shotgun Sawyer the deep rock n’ roll and blues roots they absorbed growing up are proudly on show. Case in point, the epic Isildur’s Bane, which sounds like Black Sabbath if Ozzy and the boys had grown up in Birmingham, Alabama rather than Birmingham, East Midlands. Or, when they ease off the cowboy boots and slip on a pair of sequinned platforms to give Master Nasty a bit of Glam Rock stomp. Full acknowledgment of their roots comes with a cover of the Elmore James classic, The Sky Is Crying.
Shotgun Sawyer’s previous release was back in 2019, COVID-19 and some creative differences in the band led to a protracted hiatus and frontman Dylan Jarman losing some of his faith. Luckily, he came through the other side and this album the result. In his own words – ‘It might seem counterintuitive to wait till a third record to release a self-titled album, but I couldn’t think of a better way to communicate that THIS is Shotgun Sawyer. Definitively. Something new is starting here.“
Amen to that.
(4 / 5)
