SMILE Neue Zukunft, Berlin am 16.03.27

With their new album Gun-Shy, US-German noise-rock band SMILE capture the energy of their live performances on record. Anyone who has seen the band, whose members now live in Amsterdam, Berlin, and Cologne, perform live will be familiar with the unrestrained stage presence of singer and performer Rubee Fegan.

On Gun-Shy, the band, working with producer Olaf Opal, have managed to capture precisely that intensity while preserving the rawness and immediacy of the album’s creation. Alongside studio recordings, the album features demos from Fegan’s hometown of Albuquerque and so-called “first takes” that have been left in their original form. Rather than polishing spontaneous ideas after the fact, SMILE give them room to breathe. Noisy guitars collide with haunting melodies, while Fegan’s voice shifts between urgency and vulnerability. It is precisely these contrasts that give the album its dynamic energy.

Gun-Shy reveals a band that has continued to sharpen its distinctive sound since its debut album Price of Progress, without losing any of its unpredictability.