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Famously Alive
Artist
Guerilla Toss
ReleaseProduct
Famously Alive
Label
Sub Pop Records
Catalogue Number
SP1480
Release Date
March 25, 2022

Genres

Press Release

Dig deep enough inside yourself -- start treating your body as your sanctuary rather than your enemy -- and eventually you'll find yourself blooming right back out into the sun. That's the transformation Guerilla Toss trace on their newest album Famously Alive, their effervescent Sub Pop debut. After a decade sprinkling glitter into grit, building a reputation as one of the most ferociously creative art-rock groups working, the upstate New York band have eased fully into their light. This is Guerilla Toss at their most luminescent -- awake, alive, and extending an open invitation to anyone who wants to soak it all up beside them.

Singer and lyricist Kassie Carlson, multi-instrumentalist Peter Negroponte and guitarist Arian Shafiee wrote Famously Alive at home in the Catskills during the pervading quiet of the pandemic year. The uncertainty of COVID-19 lockdowns and the total disruption of routine forced Carlson to negotiate with herself in new and challenging ways. "You have to be with yourself all the time during the pandemic," she says. "I had to figure out a way to manage my anxiety. The pandemic was hard, but it helped me get comfortable inside my own body. My peace of mind came out of being thrust into the deepest shit. This album is all about being happy, being alive, and strength. It’s meant to inspire people."

The album's title derives from a poem written by a close friend of the band, Jonny Tatelman, who supported Carlson through the early stages of her recovery from opiate addiction. The poem comprises the entirety of the lyrics to the title track, an exuberant ode to loving your own survival and charting a course into unconditional self-acceptance. "The song 'Famously Alive' is about living with purpose and excitement whether you’re famous or not, accepting your strangeness and thriving even if your successes look different than other people’s," notes Carlson. Negroponte adds. "I also like to think of it as a way to describe living through something traumatic and coming out of it a stronger, wiser person."

Throughout the record, Guerilla Toss meet themselves with curiosity, generosity, and acceptance even for the harder parts of being alive. Together with guitarist Arian Shafiee, Carlson and Negroponte cultivated a sound that spliced together psychedelic texturing and Krautrock syncopation with the gloss and glow of contemporary pop music. Carlson’s voice, its range now broadened by a recent venture into formal training, puts playful, searching vocal melodies and lyrics about reaching for yourself and holding fast in your own love atop ripples of Auto-Tune.

Famously Alive finds Guerilla Toss coming into the fullness of their power, celebrating their prismatic idiosyncrasies from a place of optimism and abundance. It is a joyous album, equal parts bizarre, accessible, and fun.

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Digital Track List

  1. 1 Cannibal Capital 4:24 Buy

    Cannibal Capital

  2. 2 Famously Alive 2:05 Buy

    Famously Alive

  3. 3 Live Exponential 2:35 Buy

    Live Exponential

  4. 4 Mermaid Airplane 2:58 Buy

    Mermaid Airplane

  5. 5 Wild Fantasy 4:29 Buy

    Wild Fantasy

  6. 6 Pyramid Humm 3:57 Buy

    Pyramid Humm

  7. 7 Excitable Girls 2:38 Buy

    Excitable Girls

  8. 8 I Got Spirit 3:05 Buy

    I Got Spirit

  9. 9 Happy Me 4:07 Buy

    Happy Me

  10. 10 Heathen In Me 3:13 Buy

    Heathen In Me

Guerilla Toss

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Sub Pop Records

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Alternative / Indie / Post-rock

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Electronic and Electronica

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Limited Editions

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