The right songs, strung together, give a revitalized vision of our surroundings, as if fresh eyes can be granted by rhythm alone, find new shapes for the weathered wireframe of the world and see the shadows as they dance with the light of day. Animal Hospital, the new LP from Chicago art punks Ganser, is a monument to observation, a tome of stray thoughts gathered while moving through a crowd coalesced into a collective take on the absurd contradictions of lives moving past.

Animal Hospital is Ganser at their most dynamic, stretching the confines of their sonic boundaries into new territory, testing the elastic limits of sound. The core of the band, Alicia Gaines, Sophie Sputnik, and Brian Cundiff, remain steadfastly committed to propulsive patterns; drums that pound exacting beats on the heart, pulse quickened by bass and guitars, synths to calm the nerves. Building endless rhythm beneath feet moving in time on a dance floor, or a sidewalk masquerading as one.

What has been gathered here is a collection of observations, recollections of the minutes that turned to days spent witnessing the humanity within people shift and spin in new directions. People changed stripes and spots, or maybe they just revealed the marks they always held. Lives became held at a distance. Masks pulled tight. There’s a profundity to be found in exploring the the surreal truths lurking in our hearts, that the sad and the mundane can play so effortlessly with the absurd and beautiful to make something haunting, something striking, songs that sting and soar and beg you to dance all at once.

Recorded at Jamdek Studios by Doug Malone (with additional recording by Nick Broste at Electrical Audio) and produced in partnership with longtime collaborator Angus Andrews (Liars) between January and March of 2025, Animal Hospital is a masterwork of Ganser’s long-honed craft. Songs that began life as notes scratched as far back as 2020 (save for “stripe”, a demo reworked from 2001) that have been honed and committed here to tape, pressed into wax. Ganser has built their sound out, constructed walls that tower to new heights, joined on the record by Charlie Landsman and Dove Hollis to shore up the foundation.

Time on the road with artists like IDLES, Mclusky and Ted Leo, alongside shows with Amyl & The Sniffers, Bikini Kill, Viagra Boys and so many more have only sharpened the indelible talent that lurks in all corners of Ganser’s work, filtering the absurd and the profound through a prism and emerging with music that refuses to believe that any one thing is true, that instead all things hold strength and secrets in their shadows, and it's only in beckoning us all to the floor and giving us purpose that we can understand the inescapable beauty of all contradictory things.

1. Black Sand
2. Stripe
3. Ten Miles Tall
4. Dig Until I Reach the Moon
5. Grounding Exercises
6. Half Plastic
7. Speaking of the Future
8. Creature Habits
9. Lounger
10. Discount Diamonds
11. Plato
12. Left to Chance