Over three studio albums and nearly a decade, Wirral-born Louisa Roach has built She Drew The Gun into a project that fully lives up to its incendiary name. A place for Roach to explore a visceral musical world informed by influences ranging 80's electronica, hip-hop, political poetry, and cosmic scouse psychedelia epitomised by hometown heroes The Coral (whose lead singer James Skelly took her under his wing during She Drew The Gun’s early days), lyrically it’s found her taking aim at the wild injustices she was persistently seeing in the world at large, decrying corrupt conservative governments and rallying for a more empathetic way of living.

2016 debut ‘Memories of Another Future’ was swiftly followed by a crowning as Glastonbury Festival’s Emerging Talent Competition winner; follow-up ‘Revolution of Mind’ was named one of BBC 6 Music’s Albums of the Year, while 2021’s ‘Behave Myself’ saw Clash praising the record as “some of her most finessed and contoured songwriting to date”. Having firmly carved out her niche of rousing, laser-sharp social commentary, it’s a side to Roach’s songwriting that will never leave her (not in this political climate at least). But sometimes, life sends you to a place where you have to finally turn your eye on yourself, and it’s with this in mind that She Drew The Gun presents fourth album ‘Howl’.

It’s still an album that is regularly furious at the world it finds itself inhabiting; you only need glance at ‘Mirrors’’ protestations (“I’m an enclosed animal born into service of the capitalist pigs”) to see that. But there’s also a new, vulnerable, self-examining side to Roach on display here, born from a transformative few years that saw the musician break down entirely and do the long, hard work to build herself back up. “I had my heart split open from many directions, but I had to go through that to realise I needed to heal and to get some help,” she begins. “I think sometimes you build up an armour to protect yourself when you’re younger and you keep wearing it until you can’t do it anymore. You start to see your patterns and you just get tired of it. You realise life’s too short.”

The journey to ‘Howl’ began, as many journeys do, from a place of real darkness. Following relationship breakdown and some additional personal traumas, Roach found herself in a spiral of shame and fear. She describes “cocooning” herself at home, living with her son, scared to go outside, and dredging through the lifetime of difficult feelings that had come from unprocessed grief and defences built from growing up queer in a “homophobic, heteronormative environment”. “I was drinking too much, and then something happened that made me realise I couldn't keep myself safe when I was drinking,” she continues. “I started a journey in sobriety, and I thought it would make my life instantly better, but you have to face yourself. You’re there, conscious with yourself, for such a long time and there’s no escaping. I was trying to heal myself but to do that, you have to let yourself feel pain that you haven’t let yourself feel before.”

She started seeking out help, beginning therapy and doing somatic work, diligently pouring her innermost thoughts and feelings out via daily ‘morning pages’ which would eventually form the framework for some of ‘Howl’’s most personal lyrics. One day, meanwhile, during a chance visit to a festival bar, the universe threw her a lifeline. “I met a woman, now a friend, there who said she knew I would walk into her bar and that she manifested me,” Roach smiles. “She told me about a place she was creating in Portugal in the mountains, some farmland she had bought which was for helping people heal, and I just burst out crying. She was like, ‘What’s the matter, do you need somewhere to go?’ And I was just like, ‘Yes, I’ve been looking for somewhere’.”

Visiting the mountains of Serra de Estrella and being in nature (“It does things to your system”) became a pivotal part of the healing journey that ‘Howl’ would eventually document. Meditation, too, would prove integral to the process, as Roach embarked on guided sessions in which she would come face to face with previous versions of herself, working through the pain and trying to come to a place of peace. “It was a surreal journey into my psyche. I did a guided meditation about meeting my inner critic and having a conversation with them, and they said I had a dam of shame that they were trying to keep from spilling out,” she says. “I’ve cried with past versions of myself and made friends with them when sometimes at first it was too painful for us to face each other. I like to think of it as my ego structure showing itself to me so that I can understand myself better. With all its scars and its magic, it’s a beautiful thing.”

And so, with this great well of learning filling her up, Roach began to turn it all into her fourth album - one that she sees as “chapters” of this process, split into A side/ B side halves. The first sounds more traditionally like She Drew The Gun: prowling, primal offerings like ‘Howl’’s recently-released title track, that nods to swaggering artists like Black Rebel Motorcycle Club but with the societal dial turned up. Side B, however, sees Roach embrace the pop influences that have always been there (an ornament of Cher as a guardian angel hangs in her studio room). It is, for all intents and purposes, a collection of songs about love.

“There’s the side of the album which is the gun, the conscious spoken word, the thoughts and words on living in late capitalism, on war, on historical perspectives,” she explains. “But then there’s the other side of the album which is the heartbreak that I’ve been through, the love songs. I think it’s the thing of trauma being a coin with two sides; it opens up portals for you. The whole album’s got a bit of a magical side to it: witches, spells, the moon, the lovers, the cards being dealt, rituals, mirrors. I feel more connected to the universe and there’s so much that it’s shown me.”

On ‘Mirrors’ (one of the Side A tracks born from her morning pages), she holds a glass up to herself over the years, addressing the reflections with grizzled stabs of guitar. ‘Washed In Blue’ - a second side highlight - meanwhile sees Roach harnessing her inner Springsteen with an unabashed heart-on-sleeve epic that allows itself to soar. They’re two totally different versions of the musician, but together they combine to paint a picture of an artist accepting and leaning into their multiplicities. “‘Nothing Lasts’ is about accepting that everything is transient, but another “What’s the Matter” is singing to yourself about remembering your own divinity and dusting yourself off and carrying on,” she continues. “The message is to remember who you are and that you’re here in this realm to learn about yourself.”

Recorded alongside producer Ash Workman (Christine & The Queens, Metronomy) who helped bring the tracks’ pop side to life during sessions at his Margate studio, Roach also worked with her son Cole on ‘Howl’’s demos: the beginning of a familial working relationship that they’ve already shaken hands on to continue. It’s a heartwarming note in an album story that’s been far from plain sailing. Roach doesn’t claim to be ‘healed’ (if such a thing exists), but as she prepares to release She Drew The Gun’s impressively vulnerable fourth, she’s somewhere along the journey with a document that shows just how far she’s come.

“I’m not trying to say I’m enlightened at all. I’m just learning and doing better,” she says. “A howl can be a mourning thing, or it can be a scream out to the world, which is what a piece of art can be. It’s got a connection to primal energy and I feel like that’s what I’ve been connecting to - my past and a little bit of magic. ‘Howl’ captures that.”

Paul Heaton

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