Howl

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. Her 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, out via Submarine Cat Records. Recorded alongside producer Ash Workman (Christine and The Queens, Metronomy) who helped bring the tracks’ pop side to life during sessions at his Margate studio, Louisa 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.