When Pearl Jam’s Stone Gossard contacted James Joseph on Instagram offering to sign his band, he didn’t believe it was him.
“I didn’t even reply for a day or two,” says singer/guitarist Joseph. “I said, ‘Oh yeah? That would be fun – tell me more.’ Next thing you know, we’re on a Zoom call with him.”
Now James And The Cold Gun’s self-titled debut album is out on Gossard’s revived Loosegroove Records (which released Queens Of The Stone Age’s debut back in the day). Gossard had heard the Welsh rockers’ tune Long Way Home on Seattle’s KEXP Radio – a tune they had donated to a charity compilation in Cardiff, their home town, and had made its way across the Atlantic. Talk about good karma.
Until three years ago 28-year-old Joseph had been the bassist for rising pop rock outfit Holding Absence. But when he and housemate, guitarist James Biss, started blowing away lockdown cobwebs with jam sessions in their garage, things changed.
“It was like we were fifteen again,” says Joseph, “playing these horrendous Foo Fighters and Zeppelin covers at first. We wanted this band to be fairly simple, high energy, cathartic rock. We didn’t overthink it.”
Joseph quit his old band for the new one, taking its name from the Kate Bush banger that doubles as their walk-on music. James And The Cold Gun released DIY singles (early track She Moves has just over a million Spotify plays), and EPs too. They’ve toured the UK with Those Damn Crows, The Wildhearts and Therapy?.
Audiences have told them they sound like Three Colours Red, Mudhoney and other bands from before their time: “But we’d go back and listen and think, ‘Fuck, we’re happy to be compared to that!’ We were slowly figuring out what we are, and still are.”
Along with the punky, early-Manics directness and post-grunge edge, there’s some retro, shoegazey lyrical angst to The Gun’s college-y rock; Bittersweet could be The Cure borrowing Nirvana’s backline. Studded with hooky tunes like single Something To Say, the debut album was written and played by the two Jameses and drummer Jack Wrench. With valuable input from mix/mastering guru Ben Moore (Rocket From The Crypt), they engineered and self-produced, at the behest of Gossard.
Live, bassist Peter Smith and guitarist Al Jones complete the lineup. Earlier this year they appeared on the bill for Guns N’Roses’ BST summer concert in Hyde Park.
“We’re just a no-frills rock band,” Joseph reckons. “No backing tracks, no gimmicks. Live, we leave it all on the stage. People have compared us to punk stuff like the Ramones or Stooges. We don’t sound like them, but they get that from the way we perform. We really do go for it.”
James And The Cold Gun is out now via Loosegroove.
