★★★☆☆
She’s A Rainbowis a hip trip, man, in that it is as dated and neutered as that lingo suggests.
It’s a denim jacket staled by cigarette smoke, limply hanging in the corner of a Vinnies, forgotten and perennially uncool.
There’s just not enough originality to the piece, and the countless guitar solos feel borrowed rather than owned. Gunns have evidently spent some time studying psych rock, but though they understand the surface-level concerns of the style, they haven’t mastered the concept of the drive that underpins all those freak-outs and love-ins.
‘Death Of The Sun’ is an opiate-addled lullaby, and ‘The Fool’ is all Dangerfield accessorising and meandering mundanity. Gunns somehow manage to close the whole thing with a reprise, a carbon copy of a carbon copy that sends the piece petering out into oblivion.
It’s not much good, nor interesting, nor catchy, but worse than all that, it’s not any fun. Despite its energised demeanour and punchy, short running time, it’s a veritable slog to get through.
It’s as though these songs have spent time in the company of a particularly daggy youth minister; a bore with the borrowed language of a more interesting man.
She’s A RainbowbyGunns is available throughSpinning Top.
