Stiletto by Gut Health

The Feature Album this week on 2SER is, Stiletto, the debut from Naarm six-piece Gut Health. 

Words by Josh Ray

Nearly two years after the release of their first EP, the Naarm/Melbourne 6-piece have officially shaken the ‘ones to watch’ tag with the release of their debut album, Stiletto. Having become regulars in Melbourne’s post-punk underground, they’ve earned support from the likes of Queens of the Stone Age and comparisons to bands across the post-punk spectrum of the 80s.

Despite their short existence to this point, however, you’d be forgiven for thinking they’ve been around forever. And by forever, I mean forever. And ever and ever.

Take the closer ‘Stiletto’ as an example. The track evolves, taking flight by way of shrill riffage (think Sonic Youth’s ‘Schizophrenia’) and swirling feedback, and descends back to earth as the vocals and instruments grow increasingly unruly.

But the bassline barely flinches, staying grounded throughout the track’s 7-minute runtime. The groove feels more like a legitimate unit of time than a musical measure, something which both preceded and will long procede us. Frontperson Athina Uh-Oh’s constant ‘time echoooooeeees’ chant feels all the more existential as a result. Moments we hear in the song feel like only a brief moment in the groove’s march to eternity, where it has kindly allowed us, the listeners of music, to catch it at a time where Gut Health have hopped on to deliver an uneasy and chaotic, though nonetheless catchy and cathartic, closing track.

Many of the songs on Stiletto follow a similar trajectory, allowing the band to flourish over a steady beat. It’s ridiculously groovy, taking notes from the funk-punk of ESG and drawing comparisons to modern contemporaries in Sweeping Promises. The guitars are angular and atonal, with riffs as stiff as Wire and tones you might expect to hear on a building construction site. Frontperson Uh-Oh, a new name in the long lineage of off-kilter post-punk and no-wave surnames (Teenage Jesus and the Jerks’ Lydia Lunch, Suburban Lawns’ Su Tissue, Ari Up from The Slits, etc), sings what she thinks, making references to pogo sticks, petroleum scooters, and ‘Big John and their friends’. Her stream-of-consciousness feels like the reveries of an alien having landed in the heart of Melbourne’s CBD. The sax makes the occasional appearance, which is always an exciting development on any record that could be remotely classified as punk.

We already know Gut Health are here to stay. But with a debut as good as this, the height of their ceiling is as tall as their basslines are infinite.

Stiletto is out now via AWAL on vinyl and digital.