Written by Spike Sidor

FAMOUSLY ALIVE

Guerilla Toss Famously Alive Review Album Cover

GUERILLA TOSS

2022 ART-POP/NEO-PSYCHEDELIC/DREAM-POP

Famously Alive is the fifth album from east coast pop oddity Guerilla Toss. It’s been a few years since the band was releasing a flurry of music, when you could always count on an LP or EP on an annual basis. It was during this period that I first became acquainted with them, I wondered how I had not heard of them until then. Eccentric and fun, catchy and danceable, they had their own brand of technicolor pop while retaining an artsy side that didn’t hinder their broad appeal, and at a time when PC Music and acts like Kero Kero Bonito were all the rage I assumed Guerilla Toss was already a regular part of the weirdo’s MacBook sticker collage. And yet the only place they could be found were in basements and creative spaces with hardly a stage.

The band has always been very punk, whether that be through the sonic stylings of their early releases or their preference for DIY aesthetics. Even so at some point popularity demands thousand-plus size venues and multiple options of neon color vinyl, yet a breakthrough into the big leagues of the underground circuit has not arrived. Now they are back and signed to indie kingmakers Sub Pop no less. It would be foolish to think after all the change in the world, and no doubt in themselves, that they would come back the same, and they don’t. On their last record, Twisted Crystal, they were as its title sounds. They shook their hips in mesmerizing sequences that felt simultaneously familiar and totally alien. They had personality in everything they did, from the femme vocals to the unorthodox grooves. In a few words synthetic whimsy with a bite.

Famously Alive sees them toning down their odder inclinations, subtract some artsy and add some indie. The pop here is more straightforward and dreamy but not in the usual wall of moody clouds that come to mind when you think of the genre. If it was a physical object you wouldn’t be able to look at it for a few moments before blinding yourself. Its iridescence is astounding but manages to be neither a great boon nor detriment, it is simply a quality of its existence. Famously Alive is not that fun, that’s the story of this record, mediocre pop songwriting and little promise of a wild time to keep things going.

Well, it’s not the whole story as the ever pivotal pop opener, Cannibal Capital, succeeds in hooking the audience in. A shot of noise and ethereal channel surfing are the introduction before the remote wielder settles on a funky groove. The vocals sink into a couch of reverb but straighten up when nasty distorted guitar flies across the room. It’s exactly how you would hope they would kick off this new direction but it is the lead single so let’s not get too excited. The title track isn’t quite as strong with its aggressive fluorescence and out of place shouted backing vocals that sound like they are ripped from a metalcore song. Regardless, it has plenty of power to be entertaining for the two minute runtime.

Your famous
Doctor, she prescribed
Stay famous
Famously alive

This downward trend continues on Live Exponential. A stop and go track whose shimmering synths quickly turn obnoxious and the bursts of rattling darkness do little to offset that. Lyrically it’s pretty basic with chants of general positivity. If it wasn’t sung so plainly I would have thought it to be tongue in cheek but it’s certainly not. Mermaid Airplane is another case of few complements and few complaints. I like the instrumental besides the strangely sanitized electric guitar. Hell, I’m even fine with the kind of goofy keyboard solo, but I‘m lost on the meaning of the lyrics and the chorus doesn’t cling to your brain.

I’m left with indifference and that rolls right into Wild Fantasy which fails to live up to its name. It’s interesting that a song with so much happening feels so bleh. The vocals really fall into the background of your mind. Shoving the chorus deeper into the crowded mix was definitely not the thing to do. Normally the rollicking sparkles would be a highlight but I’m already exhausted from the constant beam of artificial light that this album shoots at you. As that thought sets in you are rewarded with the best track of the listing, Pyramid Humm. warbling electronics and a spotlight shone on the vocals that go off on a syrupy cadence with lyrics that honestly sound like they are about the whole bird’s aren’t real thing and conspiracies in general. The instrumentation does a slight twist, and suddenly we are shaking our shoulders in smooth motion on a rainy day with the sun peeking through holes in the cloud cover. A bit wet but it feels good in the heat. 

Where will it fall, the paper doll?
You lost it all when the rain came to water flowers
Who? Who?
Who do you call when you walk like a drifter?
You, you
I like the way that you talk in a whisper

The return to middling is immediate on Excitable Girls beginning with a soup of looped vocal noises and acoustic guitar. Then comes a huge wave of building glare, it’s like being badly hungover and someone in the room is slowly raising the intensity on a sliding light switch. Just before the perceived peak it ends with not so much as a transition to the next track. I get that this is supposed to be an old subversion of expectations but to what end I have no idea. It has all the smoothness of a car bottoming before tripping right into I Got Spirit. Sure the group just fell on their face but they get up with a bubbly exuberance.

Unfortunately it’s of the variety that puts a pin right into the center of your forehead, crunching your eyebrows down into a grimace. Till now we were always on the border of too bright but the vapid autotuned chorus makes the leap over the edge. It’s a shame, I like the construction of the track, it just loses itself in its own shrill sauce. We get a peak of the band going through tough times and coming out the other side with their newly certified positive mental attitude on Happy Me. But it’s all in moments of vague poetry that has me wanting more and then it’s soured by the robotic hook that is as flaccid as can be. The closer, Heathen In Me, is stumbled into but it picks itself up with grace. It has a real walking into the sunset credit sequence quality to it with stabs of piano notes and bouncy percussion. The singing has so much more personality with lyrics about exploiting people’s troubles for easy money all while gliding out on a star.

Famously Alive never stops shining, it’s only a question of if the current hail of glitter is enjoyable or not and the answer is too often no. When you see Guerilla Toss on the street they still have on their old outlandish outfits but their eccentric strut and devilish grin feel faded. In a jaded world I want to be with their life-affirming bliss but the love doesn’t come through most of these tunes.

5/10

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