ALBUM REVIEW: Point Fingers – The Guru Guru

There’s been a gradual increase in genre bending bands emerging from the artful depths in recent years. KING GIZZARD AND THE LIZARD WIZARD, RAKETKANON and GIRAFFES? GIRAFFES! all spring to mind, and nestled within their ranks are Belgian five-piece THE GURU GURU. Their new album Point Fingers is a record that refuses to conform to any already established boundaries yet holds it’s own with some semblance of structure that feels like every single chaotic moment has been thought about deliberately.

Formed in 2012 over a mutual brainstorming of ideas by guitarist Jan Viggria and a love of riffs, the band flexed their creativity on debut album PCHEW in 2017 and their sophomore effort sees them build on sonic successes, choosing to explore sounds made through nature and include them with traditional forms of instrumentation. Jarring clicking, a beard being rubbed with a microphone, manic talking and screaming all feature throughout Point Fingers, but do so without feeling too extreme to the point where the music is inaccessible.

Where THE GURU GURU do tend to fit into a box however, if only so briefly, is on tracks like Ex-Alexander and Know No. Both reveal a different side to their musical repertoire, stepping into garage rock territory with a side plate of noodling guitars. Like flipping a coin, on Point Fingers, you don’t quite know what you’re going to get, heads or tails, the calm before the storm or a chaotic descent into a maelstrom. And that’s a good thing.

Am I Singing Aren’t I feels like THE GURU GURU at perhaps their most vulnerable — written by vocalist Tom Adriaenssens after a hard day at his job teaching music to kids in high school — sounding almost human and performed with a luscious bed of strings. This sense of humanity briefly evident at the beginning of Origamiwise, that soon breaks from its delicate verses with drummer Simon Theys leading the charge.

There’s also a sense of turmoil running right through Point Fingers. On Chramer, Adriaenssnes lays down the feelings of the terror of the world collapsing around you while addressing his personal struggles with insomnia in This Knee On Ice. But the real focus of the record is in Delaware – where the records title comes from — which fizzes with juxtaposing rhythms that make you feel like you’re not quite what sure what you’ve just heard, but you want to press play all over again.

Steeped in erratic vocals and rhythms, off kilter guitars and potential earworms, Point Fingers is THE GURU GURU perhaps at their most experimental and at their most honest. It’s a record that is certainly not for everyone – you would stick it on at a family dinner or hear it splashed across television ad campaigns, but digested alone Point Fingers is a manic rendering put to tape that you never knew you needed.

Rating: 8/10

Point Fingers is out now via Luik Records/Grabuge Records.

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