GUN ‘Calton Songs’ album celebrates legacy, and brings it up to date with a bang
18th May 2022Glaswegian rockers GUN are back with a brand new album, ‘Calton Songs’ released on Cherry Red Records on 14 October 2022 and will be available on Cherry Red-coloured vinyl, CD, cassette and digital. ‘Calton Songs’ is a full-blooded celebration of the band’s career so far with enthusiastic and brand new acoustic reinterpretations of the songs that made their name and took GUN to the four corners of the world. These retooled classics are bolstered by the addition of the single ‘Backstreet Brothers’ which is released today [18 May]. This is a new and fully electric track that basks in the simple joys of both lives and good times shared, but also brings the GUN story up to date,
‘Calton Songs’ is an album that takes its name from the area of Glasgow where the band grew up, and where they still write their music. This record is about celebrating the road that GUN have taken to reach this point, these new versions of great songs are cut through with un-ironic nostalgia but this is a band with an eye on the horizon for what’s to come, not what’s over their shoulder in the past. ‘Taking On The World’ announced the band to a global audience in 1989 and their next album ‘Gallus’ just marked its 30th anniversary. ‘Calton Songs’ is the latest milestone on this journey and follows-up ‘Favourite Pleasures’ from 2017 which made the top 15, making it their biggest album in almost a quarter of a century, since 1994’s ‘Swagger’.
As Jools Gizzi says, “When the pandemic hit we realised that it was the perfect time to try and counteract the bleakness that was all around. It felt like we couldn’t write anything, or of course tour. Out of that darkness came a desire to completely rework these songs that we know the fans love, and bring a different, stripped down vibe. ‘Better Days’ was the first one to get the treatment, and that really brought all our enthusiasm back and relit the creative fires”. Dante Gizzi added, “It’s ironic that those feelings of negativity led to something so positive, a celebration of our career up to now. It turned into something great, and ‘Backstreet Brothers’ really sums up that unalloyed enthusiasm that has been brought back into the heart of the band”.
The band hit the road this year with festivals and gigs announced in Barcelona (18th May), Madrid (19th May), Segovia (20th May), Villava (21st May) and a storming return to Scotland with an acoustic tour and full electric gigs in Glasgow and Aberdeen in December. More dates are forthcoming.
With the ‘Calton Songs’ album now ready, initial work on a potential new studio album started and live dates on the calendar, GUN are truly firing once more. With a shared history that takes in some amazing achievements – a band that remain in the Top 50 modern hard rock artists in the world according to music industry data specialists, Chartmetric. GUN have enjoyed an amazing career: top 20 albums and singles, an MTV Europe Music Award for Best Cover for their massive take on Cameo’s ‘Word Up’. They have performed shows with everyone from The Rolling Stones to Bon Jovi to Iron Maiden; this is a band with plenty to shout about and boundless optimism. GUN in 2022 features Dante Gizzi [lead vocals], Giuliano ‘Jools’ Gizzi [guitar], Paul McManus [drums], Andy Carr [bass] and Tommy Gentry [guitar].
From Glasgow to the world was always the mentality, and their desire to entertain remains undimmed. The GUN success story is underscored by the sheer ability to write the amazing rock songs reborn on ‘Calton Songs’; these ‘Backstreet Brothers’ remain serious contenders.
Welcome to The Calton. The Calton District in Glasgow’s East End has always been home to Jools and Dante from GUN. In their parents spare bedroom just a stone’s throw from Glasgows famous Barrowland Ballroom, the boys fashioned their songwriting skills alongside former GUN lead singer Mark Rankin.
Barring ‘Word Up’, the other fifteen songs were inspired by the sights and sounds of The Calton. This new take on GUN’s classic hits and favourites are semi-acoustic versions of what appeared through the years as full on rock tracks. The songs feature all the current band’s lineup plus some amazing backing singing from Beverley Skeete and The Sisterhood, giving a gospel slant and an original spin to these rock classics.
Recorded initially by Dante in the spare bedroom, the songs were completed after the lockdown situation ended in January 2022 in Glasgow’s Morsecode studios. We hope you all enjoy this departure from our guitar amps being up at full blast, we wanted to do something different for our fans. We’ll be touring this with the full band and doing some acoustic shows, so we hope we’ll see you out on the road somewhere along the line.
Rock On
