by Michael Seidenfeld (@thehammermike)
To listen to Guerilla Toss is to step into an alternate universe. Each release is an extraterrestrial soundscape equal parts disorienting and transcendent. Through the years the band – comprised of vocalist Kassie Carlson, drummer/producer Peter Negroponte, guitarist Arian Shafiee, keyboardist Sam Lisabeth, and bassist Stephen Cooper – has crafted a unique brand of electro-psychedelic dance punk. You have to go in with the understanding that you’ll probably be thrown around quite a bit, jerked in new, unexpected directions, but you’re definitely going to dance your ass off (even if you can’t quite figure out the timing) and love every second of it.
Their last album, Twisted Crystal, saw the band embracing a slightly funkier sound, and this latest EP, What Would The Odd Do?, is probably the band’s most accessible music to date. They’ve rounded out some of the more aggressive, dissonant edges, but remain as engaging as ever, constantly finding new ways to surprise you and pull you into their complexly layered, angular world.
At only five songs, Guerilla Toss packs more sounds and styles into twenty minutes than some bands do over entire discographies. The opener, title track “What Would the Odd Do?,” has Carlson’s vocals soaring over sprawling instrumentals, underscored by a simple and steady drumbeat; it sounds almost like a sun rising over a cyberpunk desert. The final track, “Land Where Money’s Nightmare Lives,” is a similarly subdued-yet-spacey funk number, acting as a bookend for the wild ride that lies within the rest of the EP. Despite being overall more rhythmically straightforward than albums past, What Would The Odd Do? still manages to incorporate odd meters and dizzyingly interwoven melodies to catch you off guard and keep you on your toes.
“Moth Like Me” is probably the best example of this, with its off-kilter guitar line that the rest of the song builds on. The song structures and arrangements themselves are anything but conventional, changing tempos and tones with little to no warning. While their sound is filled with unpredictability, it still feels completely cohesive and intentional. Elements are introduced from every direction, yet somehow the band masterfully locks in and keeps the underlying groove going.
Even at their most chaotic, the songs are still filled with hooks and riffs that stick with you: the unison riff that leads into the vocal breakdown on “Plants” and the melody that kicks in at the double-time jump in “Future Doesn’t Know” are just a couple examples. It takes a special talent of a band to pull off a delicate balancing act such as this. To have such dense, intricate, weird music and still make it something that’s catchy and grooves is no easy task. What Would The Odd Do? is the kind of record you can keep revisiting, discovering new things to get excited about with every listen, and dance along to every single time.