This Town Needs Guns

The good:

Rock Sound - “Oxford-based indie kids take care of the wizardry, combining math-rock time signatures, intricate guitar / bass tapestries and a rip-roaring vocal that swoops above the virtuoso sonics like a musical trapeze artist.” 8/10

The Fly - “these songs are emotions transformed into technicalities, love and loss and sadness and insecurity translated into complex time signatures that are arrhythmic yet soothing, mathematical but moving.” 3/5

Kerrang - “When This Town Needs Gun hit their mark they sound stylish, sussed and like reformed mathcore men Minus The Bear covering seminal Mancunian miserablists The Smiths.”

AbsolutePunk.net - “Study Animals with the diligence it deserves and you’ll walk away with a knowledge you never expected.” 80%

EmotionalPunk.com - “Quick, clever guitar riffs combine with blissful, almost charming vocal work” 8/10

3BarFire.com - “The band make music that is so accessible with the kind of straight up indie structure, yet the instrumentation is of the highest and most complex technicality which makes it truly stand out.”

ClashMusic.com - “This Town Needs Guns deliver accessibility marked ‘avant-rock’, their Minus The Bear/Foals-recalling material blessed by charm and character singular while echoing enough established work to warrant repeated investigations, as layers are peeled and sweetness bleeds from the gaps between the fret-taps.”

ClickMusic.co.uk - “A good album and a major talent”

TheLineOfBestFit.com - “This Town Needs Guns have delivered one of the most accomplished records of twiddly un-genre-label-ifying music to date” 80%

NewNoise.net - “To give amateurs an idea, they’re in the same brains-on-sleeves mould as the aforementioned Foals, using the same basic template to make music, but TTNG are much more inscrutable and perplexing, like a math-rock yin-yang.”

NoiseMakesEnemies.com - “On the whole, This Town Needs Guns showcase on ‘Animals’ how the combination of guitars, drums, bass and vocals can be used, without harmonies or overdubs, to fashion an album that is both delicate and raw.”

The indifferent:

DrownedinSound.com - “Overall, then, Animals marks out a cerebral band with a lot of ideas up its sleeve and even if they haven’t quite found a way to effectively tie them all together, their potential for grander statements is clear to see.” 5/10

NME - “Opening Song ‘Chinchilla’ is an intricate Foals-gone-emo sigh of a rocker. ‘Baboon’ brings the math-rock virtuoso further to the fore, pushing it and ‘Badger’ atmospherically in the realm of Mogwai or Dirty Projectors.” 5/10

Nightshift - “Tim Collis’ guitar work spangles gently over easy rhythms, while Stuart Smith’s voice is full of dreamy resignation and odd string flourishes fill out the sound without sounding grandiose.”

The bad:

SputnikMusic.com - “All in all, Animals is a wasted opportunity for This Town Needs Guns. Instead of expanding on their debut, they presented a monotonous collection of songs that are all flash and no substance.” 2.5/5

CowAndField.com - “When they’re on it, TTNG punch to the weight of Minus The Bear and Maps + Atlases, otherwise it feels like a tragic waste of talent.” 5.3/10

The ill-informed, lazy and down-right amusing:

Collective-Zine.co.uk - “This Town Needs Nuns are infuriatingly fiddly. It’s all twiddle, fiddle, wibble wankery. The music is so masturbatory that it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that every member (FNAR FNAR) of this band was blind.”

We’re going to play a bunch of gigs over the next few weeks. They’ll be our last this year (well there may be one or two near Christmas, but this is pretty much it).

Click the banners for tickets:

Just got this from Kev at BSM. Free stuff yay!

Big Scary Monsters Records are celebrating new releases from This Town Needs Guns, Tubelord, Pulled Apart By Horses and Mimas with a free digital sampler featuring MP3s from these four beauties alongside a bonus one from one of their favourite new bands, Native. Download the sampler from http://www.bsmrocks.com

So last night ‘Animals’ was announced as Huw Stephens’ record of the week. Huw has been a long time supporter of the band and it was on his show that we recorded our Maida Vale session. I suggest you check it out:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/huwstephens/

Hello. I spoke to Dan at Faux Discx (who are releasing ‘Animals’ on vinyl) the other day and it looks like there has been a bit of a cock up at the pressing plant. Dan now expects the record to arrive in the next couple of weeks. I’m really sorry for the delay. Hopefully it won’t be too long now.

We’ve started getting more and more reviews in for ‘Animals’. Some better than others, but it has been encouraging to see how quick people are to jump to our defence in the odd instance where we’ve got a bad review.

It’s strange…when we wrote ‘Animals’ we knew that we didn’t want to write 10+ different versions of 26 and we put a fair amount of effort into making sure that the album had a nice balance of ‘growers’ and more ‘instant’ tracks. It’s pretty interesting to see how reviews have been divided opinion between “it’s pretty average” and “it’s as a contender for record of the year”. I think a lot of this has to do with how much time (repeated listens) some reviewers are giving it. Hopefully there are enough ‘instant’ tracks there for you to get into the record and after a while you’ll stop flicking backwards and forwards to them and start listening through to those songs you didn’t really like at first. It’s these songs that will most likely end up being your long term favourites. In my opinion they’re the songs that help make records last and that’s what we really wanted from ‘Animals’.

So yeah I think there are always going to be people who don’t like what we do, but then it’s music. That’s how it is. Thanks to those of you who do defend us/your opinion on our record(s) online and in forums. It’s really great to see so many people passionate about what we do.

Just one last thing though…if you do struggle with ‘Animals’ at first, then please do try to persevere. It may take a bit of ‘tuning your ear in’, but I’m pretty sure there is something in there for most people.

Watch this:

So for those of you that took the time to read our interview with AbsolutePunk.net yesterday this should come as no surprise, but we have recently joined the roster at Sargent House (Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, RX Bandits, Maps & Atlases, Good Old War, Nurses, Russian Circles, Love You Moon, Daughters, Tera Melos, Red Sparowes, These Arms Are Snakes). It’s a real privilege for us to be working with a bunch of people so passionate about music. We’re really excited and can’t wait to get started. Plans are a foot for Animals to be released over in the US for early 09 and for us to be coming over to tour shortly after the release. So hopefully we’ll see some of you soon

I added the lyrics for ‘Animals’ to the lyrics section of the site this afternoon. Go have a read if you fancy it.

Listen to this.

Watch this:

So some of you should have received your pre-ordered copies of ‘Animals’ this morning and for those of you that didn’t you’ll be getting them soon (probably tomorrow). Anyway, I hope you enjoy the record. We played an absolutely amazing gig on Saturday night in Oxford with the lovely guys in Jonquil and Great Eskimo Hoax. The Zodiac was rammed and the crowd reaction was unlike anything we’ve ever had from an Oxford audience. Thank you to everyone who came down and sang along. Here is a review of the gig courtesy of Joby Mullens at The Fly. Not sure he got all the details right (Chris was really ill, but I don’t think he actually puked and I’m pretty sure I’ve been miss quoted on the whole ‘Pink Floyd’ comment), but it’s still pretty good.

To coincide with the release of ‘Animals’ the people at AbsolutePunk.net have been kind enough to publish and interview they did with us. Go check it out if you’re bored and want to know what animal I think Tim looks like (amongst other things).

Dan’s baby (James Peter Adams) was born on Tuesday. Mother and baby are doing well…Dad is good to

Can’t wait to meet him.

So there are still a few dates left officially speaking, but we are now back home. The rest of the tour will be done by quickly driving up various motorways and A roads after work. Should be interesting.

Loads of stuff to tell you all. Expect a proper update shortly, but I just wanted to let you know that things should be picking up around here soon.

Hopefully these live videos I found should keep you busy until tomorrow.

Chinchilla @ This Ain’t No Picnic

And I’ll Tell You For Why… @ This Ain’t No Picnic