EP REVIEW: It’s A (Doggy Dog) World/Live In Antwerp – The Guru Guru
THE GURU GURU are something of a rarity. After releasing their second record Point Fingers at the beginning of last year, there should have been huge talk around them. While it’s a brilliant listen and highly acclaimed by those who caught it, with the way 2020 turned out, it didn’t get the fanfare it deserved. Fully self-recorded and mixed double EP It’s A (Doggy Dog) World and Live In Antwerp sees the band give you another chance to wash yourselves in their prog, art-punk style and see for your self if it’s a stroke of genius.
Sonically avant-garde, Where’s My Rum (Isn’t It Anywhere) consists of some strange, spoken word with oddly inflected beats and slow paced, rising layers of echoing ambience. There’s some self-involved, larger than life mindsets that have gone into this and though it’s as utterly stupid as it gets, it’s all the more fun for it. Things are dark and sporadic to get going and the output of a big moment never really comes. However, if that’s what you’re here for then you’ve made a mistake listening to this record. This track is not really meant to be enjoyable; it’s displaying a frame of mind. There’s an itch you can’t scratch with it, a desire for things to resolving point. You won’t get one, and that’s the point.
Who Dead (Made You Kind of Anything) is much more like if THE MARS VOLTA, AT THE DRIVE-IN and GIL SCOTT-HERON decided to kick something off. Solid, fun basslines, kooky ambient melodies moving from uplifting to solid rock and roll. There’s plenty of space for things to rise and fall, to build and decay, its passionate vocal delivery at the centrefold of it all making the runtime bounce along like a breeze.
Latest single (In) Snakes & Ladders (Stakes Don’t Matter) is for sure the front runner for most ear catching. An unusual dominant melody of the bass is really well balanced against the tapping keys, the hard and heavy pre-chorus and the catchy lyrical delivery. Where it really shines is when it kicks off into a totally new angle. It’s like an adrenaline kick to the face, bright and acidic and just makes you want to move.
Honestly (I Don’t Feel Like Dancing) has a pretty popped up, off kilter sensibility. The sparse sound of the slapping drum and the interjecting guitars and bass is pretty fresh and very satisfying when things get much bigger and funkier. The vocals are also just off somehow, again totally intentionally. The brazen attitude and clear vision of this half of the double EP is really good fun and a solid effort in its own right.
The Live In Antwerp part of the EP has a totally different start to its counterpart. Origamiwise initially feels like a twee indie rock tune. The stripped back, fairly thin sound bursts into a shrieking, growling beast that stomps all over your expectations of what this was going to be initially. The Jekyll and Hyde nature of this tune works both as a black and white comparison, and as a beautifully blended mixture towards its latter moments.
Chramer is some math rock nonsense that really tickles some bizarre part of your mind you never knew needed satisfying. It’s fairly jarring, technical, fast moving work that doesn’t compromise on beat and groove even when it blinks from one sonic style to another. This would be something akin to PRIMUS, BLACK COUNTRY NEW ROAD or DEERHOOF in its art rock feel and lack of boundaries, but with the bite of RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE.
Likewise, Mache is at its best when it’s heavy, and while this is the first song not to jump into a totally different genre and style at all, sitting comfortably in the pop punk side of their sound, the set in itself is tight and well played. Poverbrigade is a full-on form standard for THE GURU GURU. It’s somewhere between RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS and THE DOORS or THE JESUS LIZARD and THE SMITHS. It might not be to everyone’s taste, but essentially you’ve got funky, heavy music with plenty of art house swagger and barefaced, unashamed authenticity.
As two entities, you’ve got some solid work and a really creative style with both It’s A (Doggy Dog) World and Live In Antwerp. Together, this double EP is a real wander into the bizarre. If you fancy feeling like you’ve walked into an expressionist painting, THE GURU GURU is the right band for you; bold strokes and bright ideas that often clash or feel jarring, but somehow just work, in ways you wouldn’t expect.
Rating: 8/10
It’s a (Doggy Dog) World/Live In Antwerp is out now via Rumble Heap Records.
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