...Junkyard In My Yard...Even with Gallon Drunk’s fledgling flush of notoriety and hipness in the early-’90s – that included high profile touring with Morrissey and PJ Harvey alongside a Mercury Music Prize nomination – James Johnston and co. have always been outsiders looking in on artistically likeminded but commercially shrewder others. During the nineties-into-noughties this meant the likes of Morphine, Rocket From The Crypt and The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion being more successful on the back of similar sources of inspiration – and indeed the same dress sense – as Gallon Drunk. More recently, the band’s muse has been echoed again, with the likes of Moon Duo, Wooden Shjips, Grinderman and The Jim Jones Revue indirectly funnelling some of Gallon Drunk’s undying love for The Stooges, Suicide, Link Wray, Ennio Morricone and garage-rock primitivism.
Hence, the caustic churning chug of lead single “You Made Me” is certainly a strong opener that thrusts into the consciousness until it just won’t leave. Similarly rendered but with less directly infectious delivery are the likes of the relentlessly dense “Hanging On” (with Ian White’s visceral drum clatter leading the way) and the raging twosome of “A Thousand Years” and “Killing Time” (with Terry Edwards’ free-jazz sax skronk duelling with Johnston’s howling vocals and guitar mangling). Elsewhere, the intensity is turned down a notch to allow for some welcome breathing space, into which the bluesy swagger of “The Big Breakdown” prowls and the broken duet of “Stuck In My Head” (between Johnston and guest vocalist Marion Andrau) glides. Perhaps the most interesting track is the sprawling atmospheric finale of “The Perfect Dancer,” wherein Johnston and Andrau’s near-buried tones are strung across eerie drones and distant drums, to conjure a dank dystopian cinematic ambience par excellence.
Ultimately, The Road Gets Darker From Here is a difficult uncompromising affair which sometimes the lacks nimbleness, hooks and the songwriting glue that can make for a classic Gallon Drunk long-player. However, as an exercise in sculpted rage and age-defying self-exploration it undoubtedly succeeds where others would fear to tread.
