GUMS! - Antipathy

GUMS! didn't supply artwork with this. So here's a kitten.
People on the internet like kittens.

Another GUMS! EP is here, and that in itself is a cause for celebration around these here parts.

If they had delivered what could have been described as more of the same then I wouldn't have complained, but instead they've taken a sasquatch sized stride forward with 'Antipathy', and in a way we are now just wee guys and gals who are being left to run as fast as we can to keep up.

Everything that was good about the debut is here, but better.

You know how a teacher writes 'could do better' on a report card?

Well GUMS! have responded in grand style, and this one will have to say 'Okay. You're takin' the piss now aren't you?' on it.

If anyone had any niggling issues about how good a project this was before then this is the aural TKO in reply.

People are going to have to change the reference points that were dished out previously as the bands influences are very rapidly being left behind as they reach out and grab for their own sound.

Arab Strap dancing on the table to Abba while wearing a sombrero?

Aye. That was yesterday.

It's in the past.

Forget it.

While it seems the flavour of the month – this month and last month to - for acts to look to being lyrically abstract, it's very refreshing to sit back and just let GUMS poetically tell us a story.

Not since Jarvis led Pulp into the charts has the kitchen sink drama of daily life been so cleverly evoked.

The whole ep is packed full of sardonic wit, and as for the music, well I'm not hearing them put a foot wrong.

I should maybe compile a list of bands to watch out for in 2013 that aren't on the 2013 bands to watch out for lists and slap these guys at the top just so I can do the told you so dance on the first of January 2014.

Gums - A Glasgow Summer ep.

Who would have believed it.

Self proclaimed super group 'Gums' have finally managed to actually record something.

I suppose it is at this point I should put in a disclaimer about the super group tag.

When they say super don't think of it as a collection of famous musos jamming, instead think of super as being interchangeable with fandabidozi or cool as fuck.

You got that?

Okay.

Right. Who likes Arab Strap?

Nah. I'm not a big fan either, but there is about 10% of the concept that I do like if I round it up from 5.1%.

So anyway consider Gums as the band who flushed the 94.9% of the dreary meanderings of Arab Strap down the pan and squeezed loads of poppy goodness out of the remaining 5.1%, and even magically kept a wee bit of the Saturday morning after the Friday night hangover in there.

If you can wrap your head around that then add in that on the Friday night they were drunkenly listening to Teenage Fanclub, and when the hit the studio feeling a bit worse for wear some of that filtered into what they were doing as well.

Still with me?

Okay.

Next try to imagine that you have at some point of your life lived within five mile radius of a train station that links with Glasgow Central.

(You don't have to do this if you do, or have.)

Now imagine that throughout your life you have visited Glasgow and drank under the trees in its many parks, wandered the street in the rain at 3am, slept behind a skip and been pished on at least once.

Hold that thought.

Let it seep in.

Got it?

That's the 'Gums' ep.

PS. I haven't listened to Arab Strap in years so the percentages may be off by a point or two.

Download it here for free....yes free.