Gun – The Calton Songs (2022) Review

Re-working your own classics is tricky at the best of times — doing it after a change of singer is riskier still.

Yet The Calton Songs pulls it off.

Part reimagining, part reset, Gun’s 2022 collection gives frontman Dante Gizzi the chance to put an official studio stamp on the band’s best-known material from the 80s and 90s, and in several cases the new versions don’t merely hold up — they improve on the originals.

Watching The World Go By

The timing couldn’t have been crueller.

After Favourite Pleasures finally delivered Gun their biggest chart moment of the reunion era — peaking at No. 16 on the UK Albums Chart — the band were poised to capitalise with a full-scale tour.

Then the pandemic hit, and the momentum vanished overnight.

With plans scuppered and the world reduced to closed doors and cancelled dates, the band later spoke openly about the mental health toll of lockdown and the strange disorientation of losing the one thing that normally keeps musicians grounded: routine, purpose, and the stage.

The Calton Songs began as a way back. This small-scale project eventually moved out of Dante Gizzi’s spare-bedroom setup and grew into something more substantial, eventually completed in Glasgow once restrictions eased.

In this sense, the album isn’t just a reworking of old material — it’s the sound of Gun getting their heads back into the game, one familiar chorus at a time.

Emerging From The Darkness

The joy of The Calton Songs is hearing familiar favourites regain their shape under Dante Gizzi’s voice and the modern-era band chemistry.

This isn’t change for the sake of it — in several cases, the reworked versions sharpen the hooks, deepen the emotion, and make songs you thought you knew feel newly present.

Album opener Coming Home (2022) is vastly superior in this format to the version that failed to make the cut for 1989’s Taking On The World, and it’s easy to imagine it becoming a live favourite in years to come. It’s joined by an electrifying take on Inside Out (2022) and a genuinely bold reworking of Don’t Say It’s Over (2022), which swaps the famous guitar riff for an atmospheric, slow-burning gut-punch. The change is so dramatic it shouldn’t work — yet it’s remarkably effective.

Elsewhere, deeper cuts from the band’s back catalogue are brought to life: a groove-heavy Money (Everybody Loves Her) (2022), a catchy acoustic rendition of 1997 single Crazy You (2022), the evergreen Shame On You (2022), and a more reflective Taking On The World (2022).

And of course, no Gun collection would be complete without Word Up (2022). This time they strip away the thunderous drums and crunching guitars in favour of a bouncier acoustic setup, accented by backing vocals from The Sisterhood. It doesn’t eclipse the band’s definitive 1994 take — but it’s strong enough to earn its place on the tracklist and reward repeat listens.

"I'm stuck in quicksand,
Sinking fast."

BACKSTREET BROTHERS

At Home In The Spotlight

The star of the show is Dante Gizzi.

It’s his determination to measure himself against Gun’s back catalogue that gives The Calton Songs its sense of purpose and, in turn, its new lease of life. There’s a confidence here that only comes from time on stage — and at this point, Gun have actually performed more documented gigs fronted by Gizzi than they did in the Mark Rankin era.

You hear it in the details: the way he bends the phrasing of “I don’t care about money” on Higher Ground, for example, makes it clear he isn’t here to deliver these songs by-the-numbers. He’s here to inhabit them — and to make them his own.

“Being able to write new material was a bit tough. That’s when we decided to focus on reworking and reinventing the most popular songs from our back catalogue. It gave us a sense of purpose and definitely felt like a more relaxed and fun thing to do.”

– Giuliano Gizzi

Not Everything Hits The Mark

There are only a few moments where The Calton Songs feels less than essential.

The clearest is Frantic (2022) — a modern-era track that doesn’t shift dramatically enough from its 2015 original to justify taking up space on a project whose appeal lies in fresh perspective. It isn’t bad, it’s simply redundant.

The other caveat is the format itself. Stripped-back, acoustic-leaning arrangements will always remove some of what Gun do best — the crunch, the weight, the physical impact of their riffs — but as a side project rather than a full studio statement, the trade-off feels acceptable.

After all, this isn’t trying to replace the classic records, merely offering an alternate lens.

As for the lone “new” song, Backstreet Brothers, it plays its role well: less a bold new direction than a neat epilogue. Even better, the band have stated that the track had existed in some form for years and simply hadn’t been recorded until now — which makes it feel like a recovered footnote rather than an awkward add-on.

"I don't care about money,
I'll just pray for time."

HIGHER GROUND

Gun — The Calton Songs

All things considered, The Calton Songs is a success.

It may not offer a raft of brand-new material, but it accomplishes two important things: it gives Dante Gizzi an official studio stamp on Gun’s classic songs, and it serves as the catalyst that pulled the band back into creative motion after the pandemic years.

Re-recording a beloved catalogue takes nerve, and Gun deserve credit for committing fully rather than treating this as a throwaway stopgap. In fact, the highest compliment I can offer is this: there’s a genuine chance that newer fans encountering these tracks in 2022 form first will likely end up preferring several of them to the originals.

>> The Calton Songs is part of our Gun album review series.

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