Gun Outfit have shared So Easy To Love, the latest single from their forthcoming double album Process & Reality, their first in six years, out 8th May via Upset The Rhythm. The track arrives with a video shot on Super 16mm by Joe DeNardo and edited by Dylan Sharp.
So Easy To Love is the most atmospheric cut from the new album, a brooding piece led by Carrie Keith’s distinctly moody voice. The track balances a downbeat temperature with something almost mystical, carrying more than a hint of Duster, Julie Cruise, and Acetone in its slow, atmospheric drift. There’s an ambiguity to it that feels completely captivating — longing and trust floating off and dissipating into the horizon.
“It’s a kind of love song to our friends and the time we all drove across the US/Mexico border and spent Christmas at Guadalupe canyon,” says Keith.
The video features excerpts from The Western Ends, a 16mm film collaboration between DeNardo, Nicoletta Beyer, and band members Carrie, Dylan, and Daniel. The script for this experimental western deals with technology, drugs, charlatanism, magic, freedom, and political oppression, and the footage has been repurposed several times by its makers in pursuit of different emotional shadings. Set against the song’s slow burn, the grainy Super 16mm imagery lends the whole thing a faded, timeless quality.
Process & Reality is a sprawling 80-minute double album recorded over the course of a single month in late summer 2020, on an 80-acre ranch in Pine Flat, California, while a massive forest fire burned less than ten miles away. The smoke-dimmed skies and apocalyptic stillness of that setting seeped naturally into the music, which resists despair in favour of reflective calm and shared creativity.
“I hope it provides listeners at least somewhat relaxing and hopeful,” says Sharp. “We are in the midst of an insane strategy of tension situation in the US and this is just an invitation to fade in and out and remember your friends and not get too stressed out all the time, even it appears we are hurtling over edge into absolute cynicism and depravity.”
Formed in Olympia, Washington, in 2006 and long since rooted in Los Angeles, Gun Outfit have spent two decades evolving from a raw duo into a formidable five-piece. Process & Reality stands as their most ambitious and immersive work to date.
Pre-Order via Bandcamp: https://upsettherhythm.bandcamp.com/album/process-and-reality