If Gun aren’t a guilty pleasure, it’s unclear what is

25 March 2015, 09:34 | Written by Tom Hocknell

(Live)

(Gun)

The question, ‘Are they cock rock, poodle rock, or pop rock?’ is unlikely to have been asked since GUN disbanded in 1997. They’re best known for predating Radio 2’s live lounge ‘unlikely cover’ with a 1994 version of Cameo’s “Word Up”, which went top 10. They even supported The Rolling Stones, but were never cool enough to cross over and quit after their fourth album.

Yet the great thing about being uncool is that you never go out of fashion. There are no poodle perms tonight, but they’re here in spirit; thankfully no one has informed GUN that guitar-slinging, FM radio rock was reclaimed by irony via the Darkness. If subtlety and originality is your thing then GUN won’t be, but if you like riffs heavy enough to draw blood and gleeful solos, then your air guitar will need restringing; GUN are the band every 16 year old boy wanted to be in.

They fly out the blocks with the gospel of recent single “Let it Shine,” and not for a moment do they underestimate their crowds’ appetite for, if not destruction, then rock posturing, blistering guitars and t-shirts from Camden market. There should be no such phrase, but if GUN aren’t a guilty pleasure it’s unclear what is. There’s an echo of fellow Glaswegian’s Simple Minds, and the long-forgotten Silencers, with a dash of Def Leppard for good measure.

The crowd take opening vocal duties for the strum of “Taking on the World”, before the whole thing flips and turns into what The Courteneers have based their career on.

The loose groove and dirty licks of “Something To Believe In” captures the sort of obvious insights that drunks wish they could remember the following morning, and if “Steal Your Fire” was by Oasis it would be on the radio twice a day. Meanwhile the chest beating title track of new album Frantic grabs the crowd with its first hook, and struts with the swagger of a Killers song ten times more familiar.

Yes it all sounds a little samey. Yes lyrics are from the ladybird book of rhyming (“I've been working like a slave/We live and then we die/From the cradle to the grave”), but they are as tight as a line, and most importantly Dante Grizzi can sing. He’s in total control, adlibbing and never breaking his range. It’s an invigorating reminder of how rock is best without the pretensions. The grins are contagious, as each irony-free, sing-a-long anthem finishes. They play as if they know they’re a footnote in music history, with nothing to prove, and nothing to lose. They put the fun back in Gun.