The Gun Club - Miami

Jeffrey Lee Pierce's swampy, haunted vision of American roots music comes into sharp focus on Miami, The Gun Club's 1982 second album, presented here in remastered form.

After the feral punk blues of Fire Of Love, Pierce and his Los Angeles band teamed with Blondie guitarist Chris Stein, who produced the record and released it on his Animal label. The result was cleaner and more spacious but no less unsettling, steeped in Delta blues, country and voodoo imagery, then filtered through the restless energy of the LA punk scene.

Carry Home and Like Calling Up Thunder set the tone with lean, twanging guitars and Pierce's unmistakable howl, while the band's cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival's Run Through The Jungle drags the original's paranoia into even darker territory. John Hardy reworks an old outlaw folk ballad with punk urgency, proof of how deep Pierce's love of American song ran.

Miami has long been a touchstone for alt-country and gothic rock, and it still feels ahead of its time. This remastered edition on 140 gram vinyl gives Pierce's eerie poetry and the band's taut playing a fresh home on the turntable.

Shelve it beside your Cramps and early Nick Cave records, then let the heat and dread of Miami seep in.