Even in the extremely fertile Olympia DIY scene, Gun Outfit have managed to stand out. After Milk Music, they are the band that has garnered the most national attention, and deservedly so. Gun Outfit seem to have mastered the organic and fluid instrumental interplay that can only come from hours upon hours of basement jamming and should make musicians of any genre jealous. Though the songs rarely pass midtempo and are filled with relatively lengthy instrumental passages, Hard Coming Down is still intense, taut, and attention-grabbing. The album is divided between slow-burners (a format that Gun Outfit has all but mastered) and more speedy, yet still somehow laconic (in the Young-esque way) tunes, with a male and a female vocalist trading songs, and sometimes verses within songs. Despite the rather lofty pretensions that can accompany rather “affecting” music like this, Gun Outfit exist solely as a rock n’ roll band that have stumbled upon something meaningful and pure. The warm and slightly distorted guitars churn and effortlessly play intertwining melodies while the excellent rhythm section keeps the songs moving forward rhythmically and harmonically, all functioning as a perfectly tuned yet remarkably organic unit. Though Gun Outfit’s sound is certainly their own and is a bit hard to place, it reminds me of a mellowed out early Dinosaur Jr., Up On The Sun-era Meat Puppets, Milk Music, Neil Young, and the more “low-key” (whatever that means) strains of post-punk, garage, and psych; something along the lines of Michael Yonkers Band, Dead Moon’s dark garage, or maybe a pinch of Sonic Youth’s more melodic tunes; with all of the aforementioned filtered through a folk music lens. Pick it up from PPM Records.