Ganser - Animal Hospital [Light Blue]

Animal Hospital is Ganser at their most expansive, a Chicago art punk record about watching people closely and pressed here on light blue vinyl.

Alicia Gaines, Sophie Sputnik, and Brian Cundiff have spent years building a sound out of tension, drums that hit like a pulse rate rising, bass and guitar wound tight, synths arriving to talk you down. Touring with IDLES, Mclusky, Bikini Kill, and Amyl and the Sniffers has clearly sharpened all of it. This 2025 album was cut at Jamdek Studios with Doug Malone, with additional recording by Nick Broste at Electrical Audio and production alongside longtime collaborator Angus Andrews of Liars, and Charlie Landsman and Dove Hollis fill out the walls.

Most of these songs began as notes scratched down as far back as 2020, which explains the record's preoccupations: people revealing which stripes they always had, lives held at a distance, masks pulled tight. Black Sand sets the whole thing moving with a rhythm you follow whether you meant to or not. Stripe is the outlier, a demo dragged forward from 2001 and finally finished, while Grounding Exercises earns its title as the record's most controlled panic and Left to Chance closes on something almost tender.

Songs that sting and soar and want you dancing anyway.