San Francisco’s The Holy Kiss rises from the grave to deliver their final recording on vinyl for the first time. Recorded in 2009 by Skot Brown (The Phantom Limbs, Altar de Fey) and previously released on 50 handmade CD-Rs, Gunslinger is a raucous slab of The Holy Kiss’ finest hour, featuring four songs that mix incendiary blues with blood, sweat, and a heavy dose of The Birthday Party. The title track of the 12”, “Gunslinger,” is a cover of a Bo Diddley song arranged by the band to suit their desire for melodic cacophony. Frontman Matty Rue Morgue sings from the soul in dark sunglasses, while “drummer Nick Ott [looms] like a giant over an elfin drum kit while assaulting the skins feverishly enough to risk spontaneous combustion” (Tatiana Simonian, L.A. Weekly). Officially formed in 2000, the dark humored, old-fashioned, and well-tailored quartet, "makes a dark and sweetly discordant murder ballad inspired racket that's perfect for conjuring the limbo-treading spirits of the cheats, crazies, drunks and other societal castaways the band likes to sing about in its shadowy, Dickensian ditties" (Bill Picture, San Francisco Chronicle).The Gunslinger release also contains a bonus 7” of solo recordings made by Matty Rue Morgue in 2009, just a few years before his untimely death in 2015. There are two songs written by Matty and one song by The Holy Kiss (“Go Head N Count ‘Em”) re-arranged for solo acoustic guitar. In his version of “Go Head N Count Em,” played with love and deep respect for the blues tradition, Matty channels Lightnin’ Hopkins and Lux Interior in equal measure.
