US-German noise-rock band, SMILE have today announced their new album, Gun-Shy due out 22nd January 2027 on Siluh Records and released the lead single and video for, “Gotta Run.”
“Gotta Run” is an escape room of urgent, punk, claustrophobic, yet upbeat sounds, held in by fast drums. SMILE have a point and won’t stop til you join their side, til you cave in.
The accompanying playful video of handy cam street scenes, fishnets and animal heads, place you in a seedy pseudo-reality, more akin to computer game, GTA. The video captures the landscape of Albuquerque, New Mexico, Rubee Fegan’s hometown. Dressed as a pink poodle, Rubee drives and walks through the city, taking in the different impressions of a place that has deeply shaped her. Albuquerque is a city of striking contrasts, marked by its vast desert surroundings and distinct cultural identity, but also by poverty, crime, addiction, and the visible effects of social inequality.
“The goal is to get out.” say the band. “GTA 6, first person, free world exploration style. It’s about leaving and why; what a violent system teaches the body to do even after escape.”
Broken cars, broken cities, in this gritty existence; Bright lights and dogs drooling; Motorcycles ripping up tarmac; You gotta run but where or why?
The flow breakdown comes early, yet not letting you off the leash for long. Lock jaw, it transforms into a whole different song. Now they play with their food, their catch, or perhaps stop to catch their breath. Gotta run faster than it takes wet hair to dry – become slack now. Taunting you, yet your legs and arms are bound.
SMILE deliver punk, noise and beat-driven tales about gritty, raw reality, dressed in post-rock drag; masked in animal heads, thick eye-liner, fishnets and shocking hot pink; smothered in siren guitars. No filter, lock-jaw; they don’t plan on letting you go. Once you’re in, you’re in, like a secret society, cloaked in old school, DIY and punk values, where release and community are key. They invite you into their world, to link arms, unmask, transform and be set free. “What spaces are built for emotion these days?” They ask.
The five met in the DIY punk scene of Cologne, Germany and started making music during the vacant hours of covid. For them, music is about getting off screens and into rooms. “The DIY scene is about making music with your friends, a space where everyone can participate”, affirms Max Schmidt, bassist in the band. Anti-establishment and anti-marketing; this band value music over content. “If we are not getting the clicks, we are probably doing something interesting.”
SMILE don’t shy away from the truth, they scream about it, in their seductive yet somewhat schizophrenic narratives, sung, spoken and screamed by Albuquerque-born performance artist, Rubee Fegan. The feminist, anti-capitalist narratives call for rebellion, a rejection of misogynistic values, yet all the while waltzing with the very human woes of rejection, love and bare vulnerabilities. Knife sharp, they cut through the Botox layer of pseudo-reality, to reveal what’s beneath. Authenticity is key for SMILE, who tend to use demos and first takes in their output, in an effort to stay as close to their live sound as possible.
Citing Fugazi, Slint, Cindy Lee, Women, Life without Buildings, Sonic Youth, Moin and Aleister Crowley as influences, these art/music-school 90s kids grew up on a diet of Limewire, crappy mp3s and band shirts, living in small towns, where the youth club was king or queen, providing the oxygen and platform to perform and start bands. “The stage was so low to the ground that it made you feel like you could be part of this.” Sebastian Lessel says.
Catering more to atmosphere than traditional song-structures, their cinematic songs often started out with a buzz word from Rubee or with drummer, Marius Szarnych, providing a pulsing beat, which they’d all jump on to, adding their own twists and turns. At times, lead singer Rubee would leave the room (In song ‘Gotta Run’) and the band would continue playing, taking the listener to a whole new sonic universe, resulting in complex and intriguing musical journeys. “We want to go places where the music makes us feel uncomfortable.
When it makes us feel uncomfortable; this sounds weird, chaotic, dangerous; this makes it interesting.” Lars Fritzsche explains. This album certainly feels like a voyage, where the listener is looking out of the steam carriage window, at the fast-changing scenery, loud and brash, sometimes dark with burnt out cars, clattering trash cans, cheeky basslines, and other times with a campy glittery twist.
With their new album, Gun-Shy, SMILE capture the energy of their live performances on record. Anyone who has seen the band, whose members now live in Amsterdam, Berlin, and Cologne, perform live will be familiar with the unrestrained stage presence of singer and performer Rubee.
SMILE recorded Gun-Shy with producer, Olaf Opal and have sucessfully managed to capture that intensity while preserving the rawness and immediacy of the album’s creation. Alongside studio recordings, the album features demos from Fegan’s hometown of Albuquerque and so-called “first takes” that have been left in their original form. Rather than polishing spontaneous ideas after the fact, SMILE give them room to breathe. Noisy guitars collide with haunting melodies, while Fegan’s voice shifts between urgency and vulnerability. It is precisely these contrasts that give the album its dynamic energy.
Gun-Shy reveals a band that has continued to sharpen its distinctive sound since its debut album Price of Progress, without losing any of its unpredictability
EU tour dates below (UK dates TBA):
22.1.2027 DE – Saarbrücken, Die Wand
23.1.2027 DE – Cologne, Gebäude 9
10.3.2027 DE – Wiesbaden, Schlachthof
11.3.2027 DE – Munich, Milla
12.3.2027 AT – Vienna, Club Luzia
13.3.2027 CZ – Praha, Papirenska 10
16.3.2027 DE – Berlin, Neue Zukunft
17.3.2027 DE – Hamburg, MS Stubnitz
20.3.2027 FR – Paris, Hasard Ludique
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