My youngest niece is four years old. She’s just come back from Disneyland Paris and, in one of the pictures we were sent, she’s standing there in a princess dress next to someone dressed as Elsa from “Frozen”, one hand on her hip, proper bringing the sass.
I’m not sure what she’d make of “Dark Faerie Tales”, but I reckon Gypsy Pistoleros would absolutely approve of the attitude.
That, frankly, is where this thing lives. In the lip curl. In the swagger. In the fact it never walks when it can strut, never struts when it can stagger glam-drunk through a hook, and never settles for being one song when it can be about four at once.
“Dark Faerie Tales” itself sets the tone beautifully. All attitude, all tune, all glorious excess, it makes a very decent case for Gypsy Pistoleros being the natural successors to The Wildhearts, in the sense that the song seems to be exploding in several directions at once and somehow landing on its feet every time.
“My One Desire to Burn It Up” underlines why they remain one of the most innovative and interesting bands in Britain. There’s no sense of them colouring inside the lines here. They know the shape of glam rock, punk, power pop and gutter-level rock ’n’ roll, but they don’t so much follow the map as draw rude things on it and head off down the nearest alley.
“King Of Almost Everything” is where the choruses come out swinging. It is power pop rewritten by people who have no intention of behaving themselves, and the way it trots off down its own tangents – even making a hook out of “only the lonely” – is pure Pistoleros. They can make chaos sound like craft.
“She’s Getting Stranger” is nominally a ballad, but this is not “Every Rose Has Its Thorn”. This is something else entirely. “The doctor never came again… she hated him… she hid him in the attic” is less power ballad and more Netflix series waiting to happen. It’s twisted, theatrical and gleefully odd, which is exactly why it works.
“Take My Hand to Nightmare Land” makes it clear that, for all the sparkle, you are going with them to some genuinely dark places. It is unsettling in a way that feels deliberate rather than decorative, as if the glitter is there to make the shadows look stranger.
“Behind the Mask” is a glam slammer that, like so much of this record, takes you back to about 1996 without sounding dated for a second. It shimmers like a glitter ball in an underground sex club – I imagine – but what you can’t ignore is the groove. These songs move. They don’t just pose.
Even by this album’s standards, “I’m the Prince of the Damned” takes a weird turn. Lee finds a harsher tone than usual, and if Alice Cooper might be looking on enviously during the verses, by the end something else is happening altogether. Which, really, is typical of “Dark Faerie Tales”: just when you think you’ve got it pinned down, it wriggles away.
“Rattling” offers a reminder that in another world Gypsy Pistoleros could have been successors to Dogs D’Amour. That has always been somewhere in the mix, but here it feels especially true: loose-hipped, romantic, slightly ruined and wearing its heart somewhere near the bottom of the bottle.
“I Whisper Goodbye” proves again what a gift they have for melody. There is almost a pop flourish to it, but as ever with this band, the sugar comes with teeth.
Then “The Ghost of Baby Strange” signs off with 80s synths, sensational twin guitars and the feeling that nothing is off limits on this record. As it plays out around the thought “you’re not here anymore”, it manages to be flamboyant and strangely affecting at the same time.
So, in keeping with the Disney opener, how about this: once upon a time there was a band called Gypsy Pistoleros. They were one of the best bands in Britain.
“Dark Faerie Tales” underlines it again.
RATING: 9/10
