You Brought a Knife to a Gunfight, released in Dec 2007 by Tom Perkins Entertainment (Clone Defects, Piranhas, Valentinos) and distributed internationally by Get Hip, fulfills the promise implicit in Georgio ’the Dove’ Valentino’s debut single (’She’s Got Eyes in All the Right Places’ b/w ’Bête noire’). More than a brief sampling, this 7-song set invites one to absolutely gorge oneself on Valentino’s gilded croon, decadent guitar, purling atmospherics, and gamey subjects: suicides, prostitutes, fetishists of nearly every stripe, monomaniacs, Friedrich Nietzsche.

The bitter, banana-flavored title track sets the tone with its overstated hostility traipsing to the tango for a spell before summoning a regular bash-fest, obliged by drummer Ben Luckett. The disc is buttressed with a new, dirtier version of the Dove’s debut a-side, as well as another winning experiment in pop-- the bright, jangly ’Here I Come (And There You Go)’-- that comes complete with pizzicato strings and spaghetti western guitar solo. But elsewhere, Valentino eschews tight, hook-laden songwriting in favor of mood and dynamics. ’I Won’t Betray You’-- an homage to Chuck Berry’s infamous home video (’I’ll never forget what Chuck Berry said as he leant in regret to stroke that poor girl’s piss-soaked hair: I won’t betray you.’)-- is equal parts glacial meditation and apocalyptic convulsion. The frantic, angular ’Come Out Fighting’ ought to bear the subtitle, ’Edinburgh, 1979.’ And finally, closing the set, ‘the Stranger’ might be equally at home on Low, had David Lynch joined Bowie and Eno in the control room.

-- M Lane Johnson, biographer.