Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Immersed in the Noir, a focus of the black and white, a soft lingering shot on the femme fatale, the streets full of people, unwavering in their direction, unaware of what is about to hit them; and all the while the camera keeps turning, the film keeps playing, and the heroes prove that whilst there are No Saints In The City, there angels who know how drive the music home.
Following on their debut E.P., Headed West, Ghosts Of Sunset take the listener to that most cinematic of cities and show just what lies out of reach, the spark in the imagination that inspires all who think of her, the power that is New York, and allows the creeping beauty of music Noir to be embraced in their brand new album, No Saints In The City.
A montage of sound approaches, fast, furious, the undertone of expression from a sharp and breathe taking suit as the investigator, the listener, hunts down the killer tunes, it is to these new rock saints that the city feels as though it is in safe hands, especially in a time when the critically available turn their heads and suggest without provocation or indeed evidence, that the genre is as dead as the electric supply to the flickering screens and advertising hoardings that line the in roads to the centres and the shops with their shutters down.
Across tracks such as the opening physical encounter of Tonight, a punk infused manifesto in which the investigator, already embroiled in the case, finds the initial clue that proves their theory right, and the more they find, the more the innocence of saints rubs the guilty, those who decry, up the wrong way.
Past the imprint of disclosure and admission, If You’re Not Coming Back, the excellent Queen Of Used To Be, Bastards Of The Bowery, Tonight You’re Ok, and Us Against Them, lays the stranger in the mist, the hero’s companion, and it is with marvellous appreciation that the album conveys an abundance of guest lead guitarists joining John Merchant and Todd Long; Little Ceasar’s Mark Tremalgia, Wildstreet’s Eric Jayk, L A Guns’ Scotty Griffin, Gene Loves Jezebel’s James Stevenson, and Bango Tango’s Mark Knight, amongst the company of saints and ghosts.
A tremendous album, one that lifts the listener out of the dark and rescues them from the ghouls that haunt the streets of expressive music, there might be No Saints In The City, but there are heroes, there are those who guard the shrine of the genre any which way they can.
Ghosts Of Sunset’s No Saints In The City is out now and available via Golden Robot Records.
Ian D. Hall