If we're strong for once, it could get contagious.

October 30, 2018 8:55 PM

Guster has a new album coming out in January, and we get to hear a few new songs now. In fact, here's the first third of the album available to listen to now: Look Alive [current single], Don't Go, Hard Times [(rather clever) lyric video].

NPR Music article about Look Alive.

posted by hippybear (11 comments total)

I've been moving between these tracks and their older songs and it's certainly definitely Guster material. It's a tonal shift, though, at least in these three songs. Perhaps a bit as stark as their shift into their Ganging Up On The Sun era, although in a completely different direction. I quite like it. Look Alive has grown on me a LOT beyond the initial listen.

Anyway, yay! New Guster! It's been a while. And they're playing in my area so I get to see them next year! Wheeee!
posted by hippybear at 10:03 PM on October 30, 2018

Wow, I haven't heard from them in so long I thought they were lost and gone forever.
posted by zaixfeep at 10:16 PM on October 30, 2018 [4 favorites]

Thank you hippybear for sharing this. These are songs that I need right now, especially HARD TIMES. Guster always makes me take deeper breaths. I'm breathing in...
posted by a humble nudibranch at 10:57 PM on October 30, 2018 [1 favorite]

man I literally haven't thought about them since like 2012, when their song was randomly played somewhere and I was like "oh man, Guster! I haven't thought about them since college!"
posted by numaner at 1:22 AM on October 31, 2018 [1 favorite]

I missed them when they played in my neighborhood a few years ago.
posted by octothorpe at 5:42 AM on October 31, 2018

Sorry if this is a derail but "album" Are groups releasing new songs in the format of an LP or CD with the same length constraints? I certainly get a themed group of compositions and having a clear cut deadline/release is important for artistic and commercial reasons but isn't it pretty arbitrary in our great amorphous online age?
posted by sammyo at 6:35 AM on October 31, 2018

YES. Thank you, hippybear. Diving in now.
posted by PussKillian at 6:39 AM on October 31, 2018

This album -- it's a collection of 9 songs which the band are releasing together in digital, CD, and vinyl format. I'm not entirely sure what your point is, but that's what is happening and this kind of release is what bands have done since the days of 78rpm recordings when each song was a single side of a vinyl and several vinyls were released bound together in an "album" of music.
posted by hippybear at 6:40 AM on October 31, 2018 [1 favorite]

Okay, I'm going to post one "hit" track and one "deep cut" track from each Guster album over the next while. I hope nobody minds. Please contribute your own suggestions. I'm going album by album, but that isn't anything strict.

Debut album (which I purchased out of their guitar case decades ago), 1994's Parachute. Hit: Mona Lisa. Deep Cut: Love For Me

[Ed. Note: I own a physical The Big Friend. They put them out a few years ago, and I got one. It sits on my floor and taunts my cats.]

[Additional Ed. Note: My favorite Guster song of all time is their entire first album. It literally has everything. It is Dickens in 11 acts.]

[[and they were so young!]]
posted by hippybear at 12:18 AM on November 1, 2018 [1 favorite]

Also, bonus first album track: the title track Parachute. Anthemic doesn't even begin to describe it.
posted by hippybear at 12:19 AM on November 1, 2018 [2 favorites]

Goldfly came out in 1997, and perhaps moved the Guster needle more with subject matter than anything else. Instrumentally pushed sideways along with their subject matter. They're already trying to expand. It's a great album, but a bit dark.

The connective tissue between Parachute and Goldfly might be Grin, joyous and instrospective. And how so!

Airport Song is the second recommendation from this album. It's... well, um... yeah.
posted by hippybear at 2:30 AM on November 2, 2018