After listening to album opener ‘Church of the Pistoleros’ for a few seconds, you would be forgiven for thinking that it might be ‘Fix You’ #2. But Gypsy Pistoleros are no Coldplay. How can they be with lyrics like “Give us today our daily dread / As we deceive those who would dare to control us”? The Worcester-based ‘glam punk outlaws’ are on a mission to yell and be damned. No heaven for these heathens.
In the band’s own words, the remastered Church of the Pistoleros “isn’t just a reissue – it’s a rebirth.” In that case, you could say that it’s like the resurrection, but only if you’re a music journalist who relies on hyperbole for cheap laughs and attention.
The video for ‘Shadow Walker’ includes masked men dashing through a forest like members of Slipknot on a scouting trip gone wrong. While the whole track is more urgent than an ambulance, its zenith is arguably the moment when the opening riff is reprised and combined with frontman Gypsy Lee Pistolero’s scream to the non-existent gods. After a comparatively gentle beginning, ‘Whatever Happened to the Old Town’ evolves into a tempo-shifting banger. Only the band can confirm whether it’s about a sequence of decisions made by Worcester City Council’s planning department a few decades ago. It’s a mystery how the installation of a multistorey car park on Friar Street didn’t cause a second civil war. Similarly, we must ask the band if ‘Last Train to Nowhere’ was inspired by the 2240 from Worcester to Droitwich. What is not in doubt is that the track, with its “Come on! Come on! Let’s go!” refrain, makes The Ramones sound as punk as Enya.
“Woke up in Worcester city / In a funky cheap hotel” – what hotel is that I wonder? Anyway, Gypsy Lee’s version of ‘Livin’ La Vida Loca’ will make all the metal heads reappraise Ricky Martin. One suspects that ‘I’m in Love With Myself’ is not actually an unabashedly narcissistic self-tribute. However, it definitely does sound like Mötley Crüe doing Huey Lewis and the News or Huey Lewis and the News doing Mötley Crüe. How many bands are influenced by the Comancheros, a group of Mexicans in the 18th and 19th centuries who traded with Native American tribes? Possibly only one – take it away, Gypsy Pistoleros, with ‘Last of the Comancheros’.
Like a lot of theoretically thrilling things, dancing naked in the rain isn’t advisable, but Gypsy Pistoleros treat medical advice like they do the Lord’s Prayer, as proven by ‘Dance Naked in the Rain’. If you tolerate that, you’re bound to enjoy ‘Hide Behind a Smile’, on which Gypsy Lee channels his inner James Dean Bradfield. Final track ‘The Prayer’ is less a prayer and more a rallying cry to fellow “fallen angels”. If you also have darkened wings and need a burst of noisy solidarity, then look (and listen) no further.
Indeed, step inside the Church of the Pistoleros – or, as the band call it – the “cathedral of rebellion”. You won’t be anointed and you most certainly won’t be disappointed.
‘Church of the Pistoleros’ is out now on The New Church Records
By: Neil Laurenson