On GT Ultra, Guerilla Toss continue to play at the mystical meeting point of DIY punk-jazz skronk, jamband festival populism, and the clanging dance music befitting their spot on the DFA label. In practice, it’s a collision that sometimes suggests a neon-splattered version of the rolling grooves surfed by Talking Heads and Brian Eno on Remain in Light. If GT Ultra doesn’t quite have a “Once in a Lifetime” moment, it does have the band’s most nuanced work yet. Capturing the group’s assault with a depth unheard on their previous releases, GT Ultra condenses their garish colors and considerable charms.
Perhaps the opposite of timeless, GT Ultra is so completely in the technological and aesthetic present it’s hard to fathom what this music might sound like in a decade, riding proud for the only time is now/no future hippie-punk ethos. And with an album cover depicting a sheet of LSD blotter and a title referencing the CIA’s MKULTRA program, in which unwitting subjects were dosed with acid, psychedelia and psychedelics are central throughout. Rooting in the Boston experimental scene before relocating to Brooklyn, Guerilla Toss practice musical psychonautics of a most forceful variety, the aural equivalent of flooding the eyes with strobe lights. Live, they’ve been a trigger for enveloping set-long mosh pits, and GT Ultra acts as a carrier for almost unceasing voltage.
Fading in on a synth wash, they get right to the frenzy with the opening “Betty Dreams of Green Men,” in which insistent congas carry a massive groove meant for far larger spaces than the DIY venues the band usually play. Held together by Kassie Carlson’s spoken/sung/shouted surrealisms and drummer Peter Negroponte’s drive, the propulsive music obscures the far-out textures hovering lower in the mix. On “Skull Pop,” a throat-singing hum sets up stereo-spun drum fills, while layers of crossing synths seem ready to burst into the foreground, leaving the rhythm (and body) behind. The band’s methodical escalations also serve them in surprising ways, on “Crystal Run” twice climbing ladders to ecstasy as Carlson finds her most ineffable melody yet on a short, arresting bridge.
If Guerilla Toss’ particular combination of sounds suggests a clear formula in places, GT Ultra also demonstrates enough resourcefulness that the band might already have some alternate pathways in sight. On the LP, both sides end with slight outliers, places where the moshing might slow when played live. “The String Game” pulls another page from Remain in Light, beginning with a haunted recitation similar to “The Overload” before establishing (for Guerilla Toss) a slow-motion churn. But the album's closer, “Dose Rate,” offers perhaps the most alluring coordinates for where Guerilla Toss might point themselves. As lyrics shout out Orange Sunshine LSD and a big summer chorus mentions “Lucy level,” “Dose Rate” glides like an introspective crowd-surfer at sunset.
GT Ultra is anything but monochromatic, but its energy also feels occasionally constrained by its own parameters, with Carlson’s lyrics and the band's arrangements pogoing at the edge of total freedom, and perhaps total chaos. “Dose Rate” visualizes something else, a dream inside a dream. And if most of the album is perhaps best enjoyed when in need of a certain rush, it’s a heady approach that seems ready for festivals of all stripes, equally prepared to both get weird and make a big, big beat.
