Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Memory is what keeps us unique, the powers that be, in whatever shape and form they may take, will always try to change that, they will find a way to make what you believe happened somehow wrong, incorrect, obsolete; they will do this to make your memory questionable and dishonest. By holding onto your memory it makes their job harder to change you as a person and if there is one individual you don’t want to change, that you want forever to stay unique and matchless, that is Louisa Roach and She Drew The Gun.
She Drew The Gun is matchless simply because she takes no steam from anybody else, she takes the poetry surrounding the Mersey and moulds it into a shape that is both immeasurably haunting and vocally cool and as she presents Memories of the Future, her unique perspective on lyrical depth and personality is enough to fall hopelessly and irrevocably in love.
The music in the album contains no ego, it offers only simple truths and powers of recall in which to guide the listener down a road of surrender and capitulation; it is one that is gladly accepted and yielded to. Yet throughout this astonishing album, sincerity is the biggest watchword, Louisa Roach plays with style as if it is a hostage to her whim, she is in control and expects nothing but honour to be heard in the lyrics, it is an assumption and demand that is happily adhered to.
The dreamlike quality holds mystery, it is the noir in the music, of subjects that perhaps might be mishandled in other’s hands but somehow mean introspective and the aptitude to see into one’s self and take hold of the resonating force with relish; it is a skill that doesn’t get the full appreciation by many but in Louisa Roach is undeniably rich and consuming.
Songs such as Since You Were Not Mine, the outstanding Poem, Pit Pony and Where I End and You Begin elevate the process of poetry and lyric to a point where all you want to do is bathe in the submission, that you want to understand the feelings of another before they close the door to their thoughts and memories for good.
A thoughtful and uniquely exquisite album, one that really allows the dark to be beautiful, She Drew The Gun and their Memories of the Future is a Kaleidoscope of ingenuity and honesty.
Ian D. Hall