It’s one of the oldest stories known to man, going all the way back to the Book of Genesis and Shem and the Shemrocks.
Band starts out making a horrible noise, builds a fan base of people who enjoy horrible noise, then slowly becomes less and less chaos-friendly until their music is so accessible it’s being played on lame-o Adult Album Alternative radio stations like WXPN in Philadelphia, which would never play horrible noise because it might offend their listeners, who tend to be responsible adults with kids and would have conniptions if subjected to the likes of Killdozer, U.S. Maple, or that song by Black Oak Arkansas where Jim Dandy Mangrum, who can’t sing a lick but fails to do so wonderfully, finds himself in the Halls of Karma where he learns the secret of life.
WXPN is where I first heard Guerilla Toss, and they had just enough of a funk-noise dance-punk edge to pique my interest. In fact, they were noisy enough to make me check them out. And while I find their new stuff (2025’s You’re Weird Now in particular) to be quite catchy and even pop melodic in a noisy kind of way (check out the funky “Psychosis Is Just a Number” and the melody-wrapped-in-barbed-wire “Krystal Ball”) it was only when I worked backwards to their first LPs that I discovered a band noisy and clamorous enough to delight the mayhem junkie in me.
The mother lode? Guerilla Toss’s 2013 debut LP Gay Disco, which may be short (six songs) but is non-stop caterwaul fun.
Vocalist/violinist Kassie Carlson is Kathleen Hanna on a Red Bull jag, drummer Peter Negroponte produces a twisted funk din and often sounds like he’s banging away on trash can lids from inside a dumpster, guitarist Arian Shafee produces all manner of fractured art rock noises, as does keyboardist Ian Kovac, who would depart the band the following year and be replaced by Sam Lisabeth, who in turn would be replaced by Jake Lichter in 2024. And let us not forget bass player Simon Hanes, who plays these great sideways funk lines and would also depart the band shortly after Gay Disco was released.
Incidentally, Guerilla Toss were formed in Boston before moving south to New York City, which I should hold against them, but don’t. I also refuse to hold Henry Rollins’ calling them “one of the first great bands of the new century” against them. So what if the guy threatened to punch me in the nose? Even a bad singer is right twice a day.
I’ve heard Guerilla Toss’ early stuff described as “No Wave,” but to me it just sounds like off-kilter, anything-goes noise rock with an aberrant, atonal dance-punk edge. Guerilla Toss are not going out of their way to be human ear repellents like DNA and Mars. If anything, Guerilla Toss’ early music sucks you in, despite its lack of catchy melodies. They would come later. On You’re Weird Now, Guerilla Toss sound like the B-52s on datura, or Le Tigre gone Eric Dolphy out to lunch.
Not so on Gay Disco. Their debut makes me think of Captain Beefheart in dancing shoes, the Contortions gone rapid time-change industrial, or a foundry that has decided it wants to get funky. Or Ponytail, but less straight-ahead and euphoric. Carlson has been compared to Ponytail’s Willy Siegel, but the latter doesn’t sing so much as make wonderfully weird noises. Carlson doesn’t really sing much on Gay Disco either, she barks. Loudly. But you can tell she’s barking in English. In short, she fits more neatly into the great punk tradition.
Bone of contention: There’s a male of the species singing on Gay Disco, but I could find zilch info on who said male of the species is. So I wrote to Guerilla Toss asking who it was, and they had the unmitigated gall to write back saying, “I’ll never say!”
So I wrote them back and said if that’s the way they wanted to play it, I was going to assert as a fact that the male vocalist in question was none other than Deutschland’s Schlager Musik Hero Heino, who just happened to be recording in the same studio. So there you have it. Heino provides guest vocals on Gay Disco!
I also asked them how they got that great drum sound, and their drummer, Negroponte, wrote back saying, “I used to have a drum trigger set up that would make all the drums sound like trash; it was intentional, mostly.” Great answer. But when I said I wanted to talk more about Gay Disco, he told me he doesn’t like to dwell on the past. And that’s where the back-and-forth ended, perhaps because I told Negroponte that You’re Weird Now is so accessible that it’s getting radio play on WXPN. That may have irked him. He probably knows a backhanded compliment when he hears one.
But the point is that Negroponte’s drums MAKE the album, which is rhythmic, clamorous to the nth degree, beginning with opener “Trash Bed,” on which Carlson declaims in a quirky fashion at the top of her formidable lungs while the band lays down a dissonant funk groove behind her. Mr. “I’ll Never Say!” opens the song over a ratchet/hatchet guitar line that is wonderfully ugly until in comes Carlson shouting. You get a very cool bass line, the song shuts down here and there so Negroponte and the bassist can do their thing, then the whole crew goes back to their increasingly frantic business. And you get this zooming guitar line that comes in and out, while Carlson sounds more and more like a high school cheerleader on bad acid.
Negroponte’s drums open “Pink Elephant,” then in comes guitarist Shafee, tossing off razor-sharp shards of sound on guitar. And in comes Carlson as well, shout-singing over it all. The best part comes when Shafee goes wild, and the keyboardist follows suit, but as is the case with all of these songs, “Pink Elephant” has to be heard to be believed, and even then, you won’t believe it.
For instance, you won’t believe the guitar caterwaul of “Operate,” over which Carlson simply never lets up while Negroponte and Hanes produce this off-kilter beat that gives the whole song a teetering-on-the-brink-of-total-meltdown vibe. Then everything stops so that Kovac can go Star Wars on the synthesizer or whatever it is he’s playing, until Shafee comes back in with his odd-guitar tunings while Carlson barks and screams. Overall, what you have is a pounding slice of brilliantly annoying music that I’ll bet would sound great if a high school marching band were to do an arrangement.
“Sugar Better” opens on a doom rock note, all bass and whiplash drumming over which you get some weird synth, then in comes Mr. “I’ll Never Say!” over what is probably the calmest couple of minutes on the LP. Carlson doesn’t really sound agitated until well into the affair, at which point she gets excitable enough to squeal like Mark E. Smith. Great funk groove, wonderful mid-section where the band stops to do some calisthenics, then the whole song reels out of control and turns into a stark-raving meditation on sustained group mayhem.
“Club Kids” opens with some honest-to-god normal drumming, then Shafee comes in with some dissonant guitar while Carlson does her thing, and you get an almost melody until the groove takes over. Carlson’s making a phone call, but the signal keeps dropping out, which makes her wish she were a telephone, and towards the end she sings:
“I wanna die ’cause I feel like a loon
I wanna lie ’cause I can’t tie my shoes
Keep time or touch plastic
And I can’t drive on the highway.”
But guess what? I can’t drive on the highway either. Or shouldn’t. I’m like Mr. Magoo out there! And what any of this has to do with club kids is way past my pay grade. But frankly, when it comes to Guerilla Toss, the words don’t matter; what matters is how Carlson delivers them and the chaos in chains that accompanies her.
The title track is a grinding and bash-happy mayhem machine, with a bass that makes me think of the Fall’s “Blindness” and lots of totally whacked-out guitar and keyboard that crosses the line into caterwaul. The guitar in particular. Carlson’s vocals give way to Mr. “I’ll Never Say!”, who repeats the lines
“I’m from San Francisco
That cute kid, I kissed him
Gay disco, gay disco
I miss you, I miss you!”
And sometimes he just shouts, “Gay disco!”
And there are these brief moments when the song turns upside down, and everything happens really fast, and it feels like you’re in a car about to go off a cliff, and you realize you’re not wearing a seat belt, which causes you to panic until you realize your seat belt is pointless—you’re going off a cliff! And you could really use a cigarette, so you’re hoping you pass a convenience store on the way down!
Guerilla Toss may have gotten better, but they haven’t gotten better, if you catch my drift—rejoining the human race is overrated and comes at a cost. The newfangled Guerilla Toss have gone from the raw to the cooked, and while they’re still great, I can’t help but regret the day they left their cave and started cooking their meat instead of eating it raw. Why, nowadays, they sound like they’re even using utensils.
Do you want to dance? Check out You’re Weird Now. But bear in mind, Guerilla Toss were weirder then. You can be too!
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A
