Neon Style and Surprising Substance - Unicorn by Gunship, Reviewed

It’s funny - when I was a teen in the 1980s, watching people evoke the ‘50s and ‘60s in their clothes and music, I remember wondering aloud if people in the future would do the same for the decade we were in at the time.

“I doubt it,” my friend Dave gamely assured me. “It’s just too conservative a period; there’s not much to latch onto.”

Maybe he was right about the quantity, but the 80s resonance did indeed persist. My daughters in their twenties are fully conversant in bands of the period, it showed up a surprising amount in last year's TV hit “The Last of Us”, and there is a whole musical subgenre dedicated solely to the electronica of the time which is still going strong.

One of the seminal bands of this synthwave movement, Gunship, recently released their third full-length album, Unicorn, and since their excellent previous release Dark All Day was one of the few releases I have bought on CD in the past few years, I was anxious to give it a listen.

A half-dozen or so videos were released before the album came out, and although all were catchy, none of them grabbed me the way that “Art3mis & Parzival”, “When You Grow Up, Your Heart Dies”, and the title track did from Dark All Day. Even the first couple listens of the album left me thinking, “well, it’s no DAD, but new Gunship is always good.”

Repeated listens, however, have given this collection time to really grow on me, and if you are a fan of synthwave or any danceable keyboard music at all, I can wholeheartedly recommend Unicorn. And Gunship even pushes the envelope a little bit on this record, venturing out into broader EDM territory, as well as some metal-sounding and even pop-like tracks. Rest assured, your 808 tones and drums full of gated reverb are all still here though.

This variety is very credibly supported by a solid stable of collaborators, including Gavin Rossdale of Bush, Carpenter Brut, Lights, Health and the inimitable Tim Capello, the jacked sax man from The Lost Boys who plays "I Still Believe." In fact, Tim gets to wail on four different tracks (!) so if you are not a saxophone fan, proceed with caution, I guess?

Unicorn, an album whose tagline is "Imagination is a weapon," scratches a lot of itches for me. A lot of it is upbeat, high-tempo stuff like "Blood for the Blood God" (40K fans, represent!) that makes a great soundtrack for getting stuff done. Other tracks are more dramatic and powerful, like "Ghost" or my current favourite, "Tech Noir 2", which features legendary director and synth afficionado John Carpenter (!!) reprising his role as intro narrator from the original "Tech Noir," but updated now with some post-apocalyptic optimism.

I'm recording this because the survivors no longer envy the dead
The final war is over
Its architects forever entombed in melted glass and steel
I watched the efforts of our species dance away on the radioactive wind
Civilisation retreated by millennia
All of human history wrought to dust
Our cities, now scorched black mausoleums serve as a reminder
There can be no victory in war
Birth is the answer to the question of our mortality
With resolute defiance we choose to grasp at the delicate thread of life
My son, the gift of survival is yours
Please, may you never submit
There will be more...

Cinematic and TV references abound in Gunship tracks, another treat for yours truly. "All roads paved with crushed-up skulls" should bring anyone who's seen it back to the opening of 1984's Terminator. I know "It is better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven," is a quote from Paradise Lost, but I also know most of us nerds first heard it on Star Trek. And cueing in Tim Capello's first sax solo on the album right after the lyrics "surrounded now but no surrender/ the odds against the betting man/ beyond the odds but I still believe" on "Monster in Paradise" is cheeky and perfect and I will never not love it. Even their logo looks inspired by the old Golan Globus logo from so many VHS viewings.

Cyberpunk overtones abound as well, as the '80s vision of the future lives on as depicted in "Taste Like Venom" as well as in the Edgerunners Netflix series and video games. Speaking of video games, "DooM Dance" (with its significant capitalization) talks about "raising hell" while "Empress of the Damned" includes a reference to "the cake is a lie" in a song where the chorus testifies "I can't be killed with conventional weaponry."

And just to make sure my enjoyment is not solely nostalgia-driven, I calibrated with Glory, after she came through the kitchen while I had the album blaring and said, sadly, "I wish clubs played music like this." She thinks it is a great album, particularly for this time of year, with multiple candidates for various Halloween or spooky season playlists. The darkness and adventurous violence are offset by brilliantly positive nuggets like "don't cry because it's over/ smile because it was" ("Run Like Hell").

Just like cyberpunk depicts a sci-fi future through an extremely 80s lens (presumably both mirrored and louvered), Gunship's strength is club music that probably hasn't been played in too many clubs, tragically. (If I am wrong, I am begging you to let Glory and I know!). And while there probably aren't too many raves in my future, I hope the band follows through on their plans to start touring and playing their music live. 

In the meantime, anyone interested in a semi-nostalgic look at a future that never came from an '80s that never was should give Unicorn a listen - there is a lot to like.