Chicago's Ganser share video to new single "Emergency Equipment & Exits' from forthcoming album Just Look at That Sky out July 31st on Felte.
Chicago quartet Ganser probe the futility of striving for self-growth during these chaotic times for dark comedy and jagged sounds on their potent new album Just Look at That Sky (co-produced with Electrelane's Mia Clarke) outJuly 31 on Felte Records.
The band release their new single "Emergency, Equipment & Exits" with a video stating, "Out of the din of distorted pads emerges a groove that bursts into a soaring melody at full speed, immersing you in a hook only to branch elsewhere."
The video, directed by the band, follows Alicia Gaines (vocals and bass) intuitively walking away. In the video, the band explores the possibility of finding greater clarity beyond our immediate reality. What if you gave in to that urge to just leave?
Alicia explains,
"Sometimes everything gets too close, even when things are good, and you get this screaming desire to run away.
The song and video are both about feeling estranged from reality and choosing nothing over too much– the floor drops out, and you only have yourself to deal with."
"It was very strange to be focused on not only the video direction, but also safety precautions during this time."
Opening track “Lucky” announces an explosive energy that evokes the Midwest noise-rock legacy of bands like Jesus Lizard and Shellac, while embracing a more colorful palette of post-punk and art rock influences. Nadia Garofalo (keyboards/vocals) and Alicia Gaines (bass/vocals), a self-described two-headed monster who share lead vocal duties, can bring both a recalcitrant cool worthy of Kim Gordon and a booming sneer that recalls Poly Styrene; the discordant interplay of Charlie Landsman’s guitar and Brian Cundiff’s drums on standouts “Self Service” and “Bad Form” build to blistering climaxes that wouldn’t feel out of place on Red Medicine-era Fugazi.
The lyrics of manic explorations, worry and dread mark this record, and the epic messiness of daily life in our damaged times attacked with sardonic specificity as often as generalized doom. These songs chart inner monologues of emphatic confusion, emotions already deeply felt further ratcheted up by the anxiety of always having too much information about other people, and always being just one tweet away from knowing what everyone really thinks about us. Culminating in the closing track “Bags for Life,” which imagines how online discourse might tackle a front-row seat for the end of the world.
Equal parts Space Odyssey and Ghost World, Ganser released their debut LP Odd Talkin 2018 to favorable coverage from The New York Times, Billboard, and Stereogum. Building on their dissociative disorder namesake, the album’s tone vacillated between frenzied and contemplative, probing on questions of communication, intimacy, and avoidance.
Having shared stages with the likes of Daughters, Oh Sees, Viagra Boys as well as Modern English, Ganser is a band that refuses to be pinned down, four individuals of diverse backgrounds functioning as a collective consciousness.
Co-produced with Electrelane's Mia Clarke and engineer Brian Fox, Just Look At That Sky is an assured, fully realized triumph of a record from an art-punk band that’s figured out how to focus on making great art, even if everything else around them falls apart.
Ganser - Just Look At That Sky