Lonnie Gunn relaunches for greatness with ‘Good Girls Go To Heaven’
There are certain acts so polished and so set for greatness, all you can really do is stand and watch, starry-eyed. American-born but Brighton-based Lonnie Gunn is the latest in that lineage.
At London’s Ivy House in January, Lonnie Gunn and her band proved that point. It’s not just that Gunn herself is roaring through deliciously 1990s-tinged grunge songs with hypnotic star power, but her entire band are too.
To her left, her guitarist, Alice, is creating such severe, dramatic, room-rattling sounds, but is holding their instrument like it’s absolutely nothing. Across the entire band, there’s a seductive ease. They know these songs inside out; they know them enough to perform them with their whole body, and that has to come from the fact that, despite their boldness, they sound like they just poured out.
You can go back through her criminally underrated discography so far and hear that, from the emotional brutality of ‘Dog In A Hot Car’, to the simple, pathetic desperation of her wailing “I don’t wanna be your ex-girlfriend anymore” on ‘EX GF’.
Or even go watch any of her incredible music videos as proof that her vision has been sharp and strong since the very beginning. But on her new offering, ‘Good Girls Go To Heaven’, it feels certain that Gunn isn’t content to be an under-the-radar fan favourite anymore.
The production of her work has always been polished to perfection, but this new song is on another level. Released perfectly in time for the band to support Kim Gordon at a packed out Shepherds Bush Empire, it’s obvious that Gunn always has her sights on bigger rooms and so bigger sounds to match.
Delivering a track dripping with grunge sonics and grossly, sexily sapphic imagery and horror references, it bottles that awful yet seductive feeling of making bad small talk with someone you once loved and would probably still undress if you could, but you know you never will again.
Setting sights on a big relaunch that won’t be ignored, Gunn said of this song and her upcoming tracks, “I’m not a newborn baby, but it is my first day of school.”
In short, this isn’t her first rodeo, but now she’s ready to graduate with the big leagues.
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