Following the release of their LP Dream All Over (which you can listen to here in its entirety), L.A.-based group Gun Outfit are releasing Two Way Player, an EP of songs recorded at Brooklyn's Kutch 1 Studios in a span of four days last June. "Expansion Pact" is the first single off of Two Way Player, which is due out on Wharf Cat Records February 21.
"Expansion Pact was recorded in New York in the summer of 2015 by a version of the band that featured D. Harris on bass and Will Lawrence on electric piano," Gun Outfit's Dylan Sharp told The FADER in an email. "Henry had just put a buzzing bridge on my old guitar, and I used it to tell a story about fractions and fragments and needing to be a part of something in order to feel whole."
You can hear echoes of past Americana solitude in "Expansion Pact"—Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid and "Love In Vain" and also Harvest all come to mind. While listening to this song I imagine myself standing on the side of a desert road waiting for a bus to take me somewhere unknown. You wanna meet at the border/ That's a bad idea/ You could catch a disorder we're developing out here, Sharp sings, and with a little bit of Old West soothsaying he drawls, I summon my familiars to protect me from the blues. If only it were that easy, "Expansion Pact" seems to say. I want to drift away from real life like the heroine of a black and white Western on this beautifully lonely tune.
Stream "Expansion Pact" below, and pre-order the EP here.