GAL GUN
Garage rock with relatable narratives of the youth experience.
“Gal Gun formed when Anthony and myself were both hiding in the same room during a party…”
Basement: What does your songwriting process look like?
Gal Gun: I do most of the writing for the group. I mess with chords I find interesting, try to write lyrics about whatever I'm currently feeling and then I bring that to the guys and we learn the songs. Lots of people write music, especially in Chicago, so there is a bit of extra pressure to stand out. It's nice to have that bit of friendly competition to compel me to write as well as I possibly can.
Basement: You all just released your latest singles Motherboard as a part of #GG2020- can you tell me a little bit about that project?
Gal Gun: #GG2020 came about because I was tired of sitting on so much unreleased material. We hadn't put anything out since our first album in January of 2018 and that didn't sit well with me. We put out new music every month of this year: 1/1/2020, 2/2/2020, 3/3/2020 etc… The state lockdown was a hitch in the plan we didn't see coming but we adapted and recorded a few songs remotely sending files back and forth. By the end of the year, we will have put out over 30 recordings which I am extremely proud of. 10 of those songs will be in the form of "Critical Hit" our second album, releasing on 12/12/2020. "Motherboard" is the final single off of "Critical Hit" and it is one of the oldest GG songs there is. It was written back in 2016, the day we finished tracking drums for our first record.
Basement: How did the group form?
Gal Gun: We aren't the most social people in the world but we started to talk music and realized we had a lot of the same thoughts and feelings about it. Anthony and I recorded some demos of songs I had been working on and showed them to the O'Briens to bring them onboard. Our first show was a New Year's Eve house-show in 2015 with a ton of other now-defunct Chicago bands. We are the only ones still going.
Basement: What influences your sound?
Gal Gun: All of us have fairly disparate tastes in music and that bleeds into our sound. I like Belle and Sebastian, Anthony likes Dinosaur Jr, Thomas likes Daft Punk and John likes Phish. Throw all of that stuff together and you get Gal Gun.
Basement: What narratives do you hope come across in your music?
Gal Gun: I'd say I write more auto-biographically than anything else. The songs are generally about me or things I think about so it is always interesting to me what songs people do start to identify and connect with. There are a few universal themes like break ups that feel incredibly personal to me but other people can relate the songs to their own experiences. The focus for me usually begins with the music; lyrics are always the last thing I write for a song.
Basement: Why is Chicago a special place to be a musician?
Gal Gun: The community here is both broad and inviting. There's great representation of people and genres in the music and the fans. No one should be excluded from the Chicago music community. There are so many great bands around here like Kirby Grip, Beach Bunny and Bur.
Basement: What’s next for the band?
Gal Gun: We hope to make enough money selling merch to self-fund a vinyl run of "Critical Hit." Tours and shows seem off the table for a while but it would be a big milestone for us to get a vinyl we made into people's hands. It's really hard to picture what the future of music is but we'll try to remain as optimistic as possible.