Mamma santa che tristezza. Il produttore Mark Coyle mette in piedi sta rumorosa baracconata, che non brilla di luce propria, ma anzi, vive del riflesso di avere come batterista addirittura Noel Gallagher, che diaciamocelo subito non fa certo chissà quale lavoro qui, anzi, più scolastico di così si muore.
Il fatto è che è proprio il disco ad essere povero: fracassone, fastidiosamente e inutilmente rumoroso (e non che a me non piaccia il rimore, anzi, ma così senza costrutto proprio non mi dice nulla), con canzoni che non vanno da nessuna parte. Giocare a fare i sonici va bene, ma fatelo nella vostra cantina magari. Boiata. (2000 No Label)
Following Nirvana producer Butch Vig's Garbage, Tailgunner are the latest rock band formed by a production wizard. In case you didn't know, Mark Coyle twiddled the knobs on Oasis' Definitely Maybe and was usually found mixing their live sound.
The connection with the Gallaghers doesn't end there: until recently, Noel Gallagher was Tailgunner's drummer (he rolls with it on their album, released in three weeks), but he left under a ball of confusion bigger than any surrounding Oasis.
"He [Coyle] sacked me!" Gallagher moaned recently. "I would never sack him. You don't sack Noel Gallagher," retorted Coyle (although on the evidence of the album, the nation's sticksmen shouldn't fear for their jobs).
Whatever the truth, Tailgunner still have the smell of brute Gallagher splashed all over them. Most intriguingly, Coyle (modelling Oasis' pre-fame, suedehead look) has inherited not only Noel's eyebrows, but his habit of moving them up and down his forehead as he sings.
Looking like a bunch of unreconstituted football hooligans, Tailgunner are unfeasibly loud. After mixing Oasis, Coyle's hearing may well require medical attention, but there's something refreshing about his four-piece's unapologetic row.
It's a bizarre irony that nowadays successful people are allowed the luxury of producing music this raw (see also Johnny Marr), while the ambitious street kids who once spawned rock's rage are moulded by the business into cultural impotence.
Tailgunner's spewed swamp riffs and razor chords are the closest thing this side of Neil Young's Crazy Horse to rock music as it was meant to be played.
However, their songwriting has yet to match the sound.
Like Noel, Coyle is not averse to "borrowing" large chunks of rock culture, but where the Oasis man can metamorphose a well-worn riff into something new, Coyle sometimes struggles with retreads.
On the Tailgunner album, Slade's classic How Does it Feel is disguised as their own song. Live, Coming Back Home struggles to be more than Coyle singing Bowie's Quicksand over an Oasis anthem.
The fearsome Zeppelin stomps of Undercover and Blow Up display riffs the size of Knebworth, but Tailgunner need a few more like that if they're to progress beyond being a noisy Oasis-related curio. (Dave Simpson - http://www.guardian.co.uk/)
The hobby-outfit of Oasis producer Mark Coyle, Tailgunner are probably best know for being the band in which Noel Gallagher made his drumming debut. And if that fact brings to mind the image of multi-millionaires self-indulgently larking about in the studio, well, you'd be partly right.
Named after a specialist porn magazine, Tailgunner find Coyle, Gallagher and drummer Paul Stacey harking back to the shamelessly sexist rock heyday of Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Deep Purple.
Sadly, compared to criminally undervalued American stoner outfits like Goatsnake and The Want, Tailgunner's leather-trousered muse looks a little weedy--the likes of "Reefer Keeper" and "Deadly, Man" lost in a cloud of dry ice and the never-ending chug of sedated guitar riffage.
Elsewhere, though, there are some isolated but great moments: the ragged electric blues of "Undercover" comes on like a classic album opener from the dusty end of your parent's record collection; and "Coming Back Home" nods meaningfully towards the legacy of early Ride--a carefully plotted whisper of light psychedelia, barely substantial but pleasantly simplistic. All said, as hobbies go, it beats stamp collecting. But be warned; Tailgunner is conceived in the spirit of dumb fun. (Louis Pattison - http://www.amazon.co.uk/)
- Living For Real
- Undercover
- Blow Up
- Coming Back Home
- All Shook Up
- Slower And Slow
- How Do You Feel
- Crazy Horse
- Acetone
- Deadly, Man
TAILGUNNER