WHEN STARS FIND A NEW STAGE

Sometimes actors make music and its rubbish! Just because you are a famous actor at the top of your game doesn’t mean you are going to be a great songwriter or guitarist. Unfortunately because they are famous and rich nobody will ever tell them how rubbish they are.

Thankfully there are exceptions and some people best known for their acting are also genuinely passionate about their music and can actually, you know, sing and play a bit.

The Liverpool born actor Andrew Gower is one of these exceptions as evidenced by the brand new single Dance To The Algorithm by his band Gustaffson. It’s a lovely retro sounding funky track that just makes you want to smile.

Andrew is famous for his acting roles in series like Black Mirror, Outlander, and Ellis but has been a massive music fan since his early days. “I grew up initially in Aintree and then we moved to Anfield and I grew up in a house where there was always music. The first record that really inspired me was The White Album  by The Beatles which I listened to all the time. I was conscious  even then that this was special and it was made by people who came from this city and who were inspired by the city they grew up and the music they were exposed to. After that  my brother took me to see Stereophonics and The Verve and I loved all that guitar music and the likes of The Stone Roses and I was hooked.’

Andrew formed a band when he was 15/16  and played gigs locally at the Cavern and other city centre venues along with his mate Webbo on guitar and they still play together now in Gustaffson.

The band ceased when Andrew went to drama school in Oxford and then moved to London as his acting career took off. He has since gone on to have a great career but it was the pandemic that made him re-evaluate.  He never stopped writing lyrics  during all this time but after 15 years of acting he saw an opportunity to actually put something out. He had demo’d some tunes and by a stroke of good fortune he had just worked on a film with Craig Potter from Elbow who had scored the film. Craig really liked the tracks  and produced the songs for the newly formed Gustaffson who released the tracks on the Jacaranda EP in summer 2022.

Gustaffson are a five piece band made up of a mix of Liverpool musicians (including Andrew’s original band mate Webbo)   and a couple from some place called Manchester.  Incidentally the band name is a tribute to Andrew’s great Grandmother who came to Liverpool from Sweden and very sensibly married a man from the finest male species in the world – scousers.

Their first album Black and White Movie   (again produced by Craig Potter) was   launched with a gig at the Jacaranda, which remains a favourite haunt of Andrew’s when he is home in Liverpool.

As well as making some great records as you might imagine from someone with an acting background the visuals are important and all of Gustaffson’s videos are well worth a watch. Indeed the video for Jacaranda  features the unofficial queen of Liverpool, Sue Johnston.

Gustaffson have got a couple of gigs coming up in London and Manchester to celebrate the launch of their new single and Andrew has promised another Liverpool show when their second album is released next year.  Even though Andrew has committed a cardinal sin in writing a song about Everton Football Club I’ll still make an effort to be there. (The track if you are so minded is called Goodison Under The Lights. I’ve no idea what it is like as obviously it is not something anyone with any sense would ever listen to).

The inspiration for the new single came from when Andrew attended an event where  Giles Martin (son of legendary Beatles producer George Martin) talked about the impact of impact of algorithms on music playlists etc and said simply that ‘People hear music now rather than listening to it’. This struck a real chord with Andrew who wants people to feel the same passion he did for music when he was listening to it as a young lad in Liverpool.

“That’s our aim with Gustaffson: we want to make music that people really listen to’. Give their new single a proper listen and immerse yourself in the lovely soulful sounds of Dance To The Algorithm.

Written by Kev McManus