Gun Outfit

A name that’s woven itself through the fabric of the site over the years, Gun Outfit emerged from the indie outcroppings of the Northwest nearly two decades ago. A more gnarled outfit at the time, as the band has expanded and eased into their later years the hackles have been soothed, the barbs filed down. The band still proves potent, but they now surround the listener with haze rather than heat. That haze may have come naturally to the album, recorded over the course of a month on a California ranch while the remains of a forest fire burned just miles away. The desperation and delirium seep into the winding expanse of Process and Reality. The record is rooted in a languid Americana, an extension of some of the vibrations present on 2017’s Out of Range. This time, though, the band slinks through the valley of Cosmic Americana, hiding in the hiss of ambient country and letting it loll against the edges of dream pop’s gauzy embrace.

Process and Reality huddles the listener under the smoked-out sun, wandering the slate-gray hills with a lungful of ash and a head full of questions. It’s easy to get turned around and tossed among the nineteen tracks here, searching for something to hold onto and finding only figments in the fog. The raglan strums surround the listener, an embrace that comforts against the confrontations with the ghosts of the West, the questions of modernity, and the casual erosion of culture under Capitalism. The band has fully embraced their evolution on Process and Reality, letting the lean years grind away under their heels, tripping the tumblers between Gene Clark and Brian Jonestown. Awash in embellishments of dulcimer, autoharp, keys, melodica, and sitar, not to mention an array of homemade electronics courtesy of Henry Barnes (Amps for Christ), the record is a psychedelic odyssey, a high water mark unfolding in prismatic colors over four LP sides.

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