Gustaffson – Black & White Movie

Gustaffson

Black & White Movie

One Boat Records – DL/CD/Vinyl – BUY

Gustaffson finally release their long awaited Album Black & White Movie and its unlike anything you’ve heard before. While a certain orange hued narcissist is hellbent on turning the world into a barren dystopia, as his tsunami of negativity, disruption and despair hits our shores, Gustaffson deliver the perfect antidote, with a tour de force of an album; so full of brightness, emotion, and love, that it washes all the darkness away.

The album is produced by Elbow’s Craig Potter and has already been given the thumbs up by bandmate Guy Garvey and Six Music’s Jo Wiley, who have both played tracks from it on their respective shows.

It’s two and a half years since the release of the band’s debut single Jacaranda in the summer of 2022, and they have been slowly recording music and releasing tracks in between Outlander actor and lead singer Andrew Gower’s filming commitments; most recently in Ellis and You.

The album’s opener is the perfect track to get you in the mood and sets the scene for what’s to come. A remarkable, swaggering poke at the overprivileged; the song has a deep rock, blowsy groove, underpinned by a thumping bassline and twinkling keys. Andrew has an incredibly robust but delicate voice that somehow manages to drip the lyrics effortlessly from his lips, from baritone to falsetto and back again. Like many of the songs on the album, Champagne Socialist is enhanced by beautifully rousing gospel style backing vocals, which punctuate the slinky movements in the melodies to perfection, in a Gimme Shelter/Great Gig in The Sky kind of way.

One of the albums high points follows in Closer, (See video below) which features esteemed actor Ben Kingsley, who provides the central spoken narrative. Perfectly paced, the song stops and starts as Andy’s vocals pirouette, arching higher and higher before splashing down in a harmonic wash; like falling backwards into a warm bath. The song pulls on your emotions, ultimately uplifting, as the those shimmering keys fade.

On Broadway which we covered here, and was played extensively on Six Music, follows. It’s theatrical with a lyrical delivery that reminds me of Carter USM. Yeh, tricky one that but it’s got a ‘lie back and think of England’ vibe to it. The song flows into the heart wrenching Flowers, before the pace ups for the funk grooves of  Jacaranda, the song that introduced us to the band three years ago. Underground follows, a raw rock track with that rock solid bass at its core, and a descending Cream style arpeggio.

Paris in Summer adds a bit of Calypso to the proceedings – a bright summer groove that owes more than just a little to Paul Simon’s Graceland era output, carried through into the up-tempo Bonnie and Clive.

The album closes with a prial of crackers. Some Kind Of Sweden has an acoustically driven melody and perfectly delivered almost yodelling style vocals. It sweeps along with a fuzzy warm bass and piano. Kingdom is almost a hymn, with a male voice choir style backing and the line ‘if you’re on a boat and surrounded by water, who cares how much sand you have made’.  It’s a deeply emotional track, thoughtful, provocative, pensive, and beautifully delivered.

The album closes with crowd favourite Northern Baby, a true northern anthem, with its classic line ‘there’s more to life that south of Milton Keynes’.

Black and White Movie is a very English record despite its blues, rock, funk, and musical influences. It’s hard to categorise but sits under the same broad dome as Badly Drawn Boy’s In The Hour of Bewilderbeast/Divine Comedy and Paul Heaton. I say broad, because it’s quite unique in its composition and delivery, and defies any straight comparison. As a song cycle it’s a beautifully played and delivered slab of solid Britterama. Every song, a story, lifted from the experiences and deep recesses of Gower’s psyche. You can tell when watching these songs performed live what these lyrics mean to him.

Buy The Album Here

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What The Band Say: 

BLACK & WHITE MOVIE’ IS PRODUCED BY ELBOW’S CRAIG POTTER & FEATURES EMMY-WINNING COMPOSER BEAR McCREARY AND LEGENDARY ACTOR SIR BEN KINGSLEY

Gustaffson – Closer:

Directed by Andrew Gower and Nathaniel Holmes, it was filmed at the stunning Albert Hall in Manchester. The video features the legendary Sir Ben Kingsley, alongside an incredible cast from Shadow & Bone, House of the Dragon, Outlander, and more.

Exploring the collision of art and technology, ‘Closer’ digs into the shifting landscape of creative collaboration in the digital age. Through unseen self-tape auditions, the video captures the uncertainty that comes when face-to-face connections are replaced by screens.

Dates: 

9 May – Manchester – Night & Day – TICKETS
14th May – London – Bush Hall [Sold Out]

Gustaffson are on Facebook & Twitter and this is their website

This is Andrew Gower’s Facebook and this is his website: http://www.andrew-gower.co.uk/

Words by Nigel Carr, additional photos by Naomi Dryden-Smith. More writing by Nigel on Louder Than War can be found in his Author’s archive. You can find Nigel on Twitter and Facebook. Nigel is also the Producer of New Dawn Fades – A Play About Joy Division And Manchester which tours this October.