Ganser - Pyrrhic Victory (2016)

Ganser have been kicking around the Chicago DIY scene since around January 2014, when Nadia Garofalo and Alicia Gaines were both students at the School of the Art Institute, bonding over their shared love of The Residents, outsider communities, and transgressive filmmakers like John Waters and David Lynch. In the summer of 2015 Charlie Landsman responded to a Facebook ad, and with the addition of Brian Cundiff, the band started rehearing and recording. Songs soon started to appear on Soudcloud and Bandcamp, and in 2016 one of them alerted me to the band, and their dark-post-punk-wave sound, particularly the spikey guitars of 'Sunk', which reminded me of the much-loved The Gang Of Four. They released their debut LP 'Odd Talk' in 2018, which was full of dissonant guitar, abstract lyrical segues, bassline hooks, and drumbeat sinkers, and they followed last year with their second album 'Just Look At That Sky', both of which are available from Bandcamp. Their sound is born of bands such as Joy Division, Mission of Burma, The Birthday Party, Savages, Priests, and while there’s no shortage of outfits with similar influences, Ganser manages to craft a sound familiar and refreshing at the same time, each member adding their own twisted bent to their songs where needed. Amazingly, neither album included a single one of the songs they'd posted to Soundcloud, and so this collections of those tracks could be classed as their real debut album, and superb stuff it is too.

Track listing

01 Smelling Salts
02 Losing Light
03 Audrey
04 Battery
05 Sadwerk
06 Pyrrhic Victory

07 Sunk
08 (what are you doing here?)
09 Machine Men
10 Candor
11 Strategies For Living