This mini profile originally ran in November 2024 edition of Stereogum’s The Black Market.
OK. So, there was the time a skateboarder dropped into the middle of a mosh pit and did a kickflip. For a lot of bands, that would be the concert highlight of their careers, the kind of ‘can you believe it’ anecdote worth dining out on for eternity. For Los Angeles’ Guck, a band that already has a reputation for taking over the stages like a devastating tornado, it was another day at the office. Proof in concept: At the noise rock quintet’s next show, a stage monitor spontaneously burst into flames.
“I gotta say the monitor on fire thing has to take the cake for me,” April, Guck’s lead singer, writes in an email. “Never have I ever seen flames come out of a stage monitor,” Kyle, the drummer, adds. “The flames were the best,” Chappy, the guitarist, concurs before chipping in some more Guck concert lore. “There was a backyard show in Santa Ana where the cops came during our set and shone a light on us for about 15 minutes, and we just never stopped playing, and they left, haha. Also, one time, Johnny Knoxville walked across the street from us as we loaded in.”
Unpredictable concert chaos seems to follow Guck around because Guck’s music is precisely that. At first blush, “IDGAG,” the band’s debut single, is one of Guck’s slower burns: Sam’s burbling synth, Andrew’s pulsating bass, and Kyle’s fluid drumming lay the foundation for Chappy’s ringing guitar stabs and April’s hypnotic ruminations. Think a more aggressively no-wave Bush Tetras if reinterpreted by Arab on Radar, maybe.
So, yeah, for the first 30 seconds, you feel like you’re on steady ground. “Imagine you walk right through a wall,” April intones in a voice that is both pacifying and packed with portent. And then, once you step through that wall, “IDGAG” explodes. Kyle is all over his kit, kicking up a tempest with ultra-active fills. Sam’s synths and Andrew’s bass dance around each other, a twisted tango of chest-rattling tones. Chappy’s guitar suffuses the sonic space and tightens the song like sewing thread. April’s vocals rise in intensity, nailing the immediacy of an alarm going off in the middle of the night. “IDGAG” builds and builds until, shwwwwwwwmpf, like a vacuum sucking everything out into space, all that remains are the synths and drums that started the track. It’s a hell of an abrupt finale, encapsulating the unexpectedness of getting t-boned while reversing out of a driveway. It’s also like Guck is releasing you from its spell. For three-and-a-half minutes, you’re just inside of that song. It subsumes you. It entrances you. It’s exhilarating. It feels like something, and it means something, too.
“It’s dancy and has probably one of my favorite synth patches on the record, and I hope people feel like I’m screaming for them in chorus because I am,” April says about “IDGAG.” “It’s so easy for these government establishments and corporations to do the right thing and make sure we as people have a chance at surviving, but they refuse. Imagine hating on poor people, and they’re literally just at a Guck show doing kickflips in the pit.”
For Chappy, “IDGAG” presented an opportunity for some artistic freedom. “This song let me play guitar in ways I haven’t before. I used the pitch shifter pedal as part of the guitar for the chorus and I unlocked a part of my brain when the rest of the band had locked in their parts. A big part of this song that I am proud of is the transitions. They came as happy accidents and planned out alike and I think it has the feeling of falling down and getting up together.”
The reason that those transitions are so well-hewn is that Guck has been in the trenches playing shows, gathering feedback from the live experience before pressing the record button.
“These songs shapeshifted so much before we were satisfied with them,” Kyle writes. “If we had recorded them in earlier incarnations, we would have been doing ourselves a disservice because we definitely would have messed something up live and decided we liked the mistake better, then be bummed that the song had already been set in stone.” “I can’t picture a world really where we could have done this another way,” Chappy adds. “I love this approach, and it allows us to tweak songs in real-time and make them perfect before deciding which version is the best. All of my bands have done this in the past so it feels natural to me.”
Guck was born from the ashes of Prized Pig, Andrew, Kyle, and Sam’s previous project. Guck’s formation came about the same way as its compositional process: happy accidents and planned-out moves. After Prized Pig’s potential was exhausted, the three remaining members knew they wanted to keep things rolling. Enter Chappy.
“I had known Sam and Andrew for years because of playing shows together in Nashville, and when I moved out here, I didn’t have a band yet,” Chappy recalls. “By happenstance, I ran into Andrew at Non Plus Ultra the day I bought an amp to have in LA and mentioned I needed a practice space. He told me him and Sam and Kyle had one I could join, and when Sam gave me my keys, he pitched all jamming together and it began.”
Soon enough, April joined the fold. “Guck is musically an extension of what Andrew, Kyle, and Sam were doing with their band Prized Pig. Prized Pig did one of their first shows and it absolutely blew me away. I tried to book them, but they had to drop because their singer needed to. I remember telling Sam I would be happy to fill in for Prized Pig on vocals just because LA really needed a band like them. Sam and I chatted about a year later and he had just started a new band where instead of guitar he would play synth and they had Chappy on guitar. Sam sent me ‘TAZ,’ which was the first song I heard and was all I needed to be swayed.”
Once everyone was in the same room, things clicked immediately. “When the five of us jammed altogether for the first time it felt like we were channeling something,” Kyle remembers. “I don’t get that feeling often.” “The very first time we played for me, too,” Chappy adds. “For the first few months, we didn’t even try to write songs; we just played for hours and recorded it. A lot of our songs come from those jams, which is a very different way of working in music for me personally, and I love it. Everyone truly has an equal part and excels at what they do. The second click moment came when April showed up. We still have a recording of that first practice and it amazes me that it was so natural.”
There was a bit of serendipity in the mix, too. “I already knew the other guys were cool but then I met Chappy for the first time, which was rad,” April writes. “Him and I are in on the same southern lore of having an appreciation for an iconic band from my hometown, Sohns. That was already a deep-cut green flag for me. Then, to top it off, I found out Chappy and my fiancé are long-lost brothers from the math rock scene. A lot of things about us being together just feel truly meant to be. It really feels like all of us have always wanted a band like this.”
And then came the name. “I think it’s just like, you gotta pick a name, they didn’t want to call it Panda Express per my request, so ‘guck’ is just a typo your phone spells when you try to type ‘fuck’,” April explains. Kyle elaborates: “Somehow, that typo really yielded something that feels representative of the music, like slimy and kind of gross and stinky, but also looks like it might taste good, so we stuck with it. Panda Express would also fit that description, though.” No word yet on a possible Panda Express endorsement.
The fact that Guck’s name is derived from a text typo is fitting. The band’s music is five unique points of interest cohering into a whole, a single organism of independent consciousnesses, not unlike a group chat. “I think a big part of what’s happening with the band’s sounds is that every member has their own sound or creative take,” April notes. “It could be an anxious avoidance thing and that we’re bad at communicating or it could be we just respect each other and don’t really step on each other’s toes creatively so in the music you are really experiencing everyone’s raw expression unfiltered.”
Unfiltered is also an excellent way to describe April’s lyrics. They’re universal but also very Los Angeles, tapping into this underlying id, ego, and superego of the area. They feel very “now,” both in sound and how the music and message rebound off of fans. So, was that style a conscious decision?
“I think originally, no, it wasn’t,” April replies. “I think we just wanted to have a band that was fun. When I was improvising lyrics, the ones the band really liked were the ones where I’m recycling old head takes and canned statements from men I’ve collected so they can hear how silly they sound. Honestly, I really didn’t set out to be a political band, but as I lyricize my experiences, it came off that way anyway, and then I decided to embrace any other similar thoughts.”
“One thing I love about being in Guck is that we didn’t set out to define a sound or an ideal,” Kyle writes. “Those things just sprang up out of our jams and started becoming refined after our first shows. I don’t think it will ever stop becoming refined.”
And Guck sure isn’t stopping. Its dance card is packed with upcoming gigs, and there’s a full-length on the horizon. When asked about what’s ahead, you can see the Guck dynamic in action, each unique answer building upon the other: “Albums,” April answers; “Shows,” Kyle responds; “Tours,” Chappy chips in; “Righteous acts of terror,” Andrew adds. And if you want to do a kickflip while engaging in righteous acts of terror, you now know the right band to soundtrack it.