Ganser’s Animal Hospital is a record that refuses to sit still. Opener Black Sand is pure garage-punk fury, loud and scuzzy, but just as you brace yourself for 40 minutes of intensity, stripe immediately pivots into disco mode with cowbells clattering and sultry vocals dripping with attitude.

This tension between searing noise and sleek groove defines Animal Hospital, landing somewhere between art-punk and a warped movie soundtrack. Like Talking Heads, they find clever angles on rhythm and melody that are at once experimental and groovy. Ganser make expert use of of space, letting guitars and synths ring out into cavernous reverb and hanging in the air like smoke whilst the vocals shift from swagger to sneer to seduction with bite and allure.

Dig Until I Reach The Moon is a left turn with eerie synths circling in strange, uneasy chord progressions, followed by Grounding Exercises which sounds like a slow-motion noir soundtrack, cinematic in its pacing and tone, and a world away from the blast of the opener. Half Plastic is a brilliantly thrashy garage-punk single with a simple but unstoppable riff, and the whole record is a constant back-and-forth between punk chaos one moment, and seductive surf-psychedelia the next.

This push-pull keeps Animal Hospital unpredictable yet strangely cohesive, with tracks like Discount Diamonds and Left to Chance locking into irresistibly cool bass-driven rhythms. Across 40 minutes, Ganser cover distorted noise rock, strutting dance-punk and shadowy cinematic vignettes, all with a firm commitment to rhythm and atmosphere. The style swings, but the band keeps the bass and percussion pounding as they drench the canvas in echo and texture.

The vocals sit somewhere in the lineage of Karen O, Kim Gordon, and Debbie Harry, deadpan at times, sultry at others, always carrying that art-rock swagger. The instrumentation veers from clattering garage to smoky lounge noir playing like a Tarantino fever dream, stuck in a haze of smoke and neon. Ganser never settle into one gear for too long, but the effect isn’t jarring so much as hypnotic, and rather than burying their chaos under grit, Animal Hospital is recorded with a clarity that lets every element breathe with menacing guitars, seductive vocals, and a rumbling rhythm section.

The white rabbit disappearing down a hole on the album cover signals exactly what the music delivers: a plunge into a world where the only real rule is to expect the unexpected. This record is strange, surreal, and slightly disorienting. On the surface it’s fun, groovy, and danceable, but the sudden shifts in mood are deeply intriguing, daring you to try and make sense of it. On Speaking of the future, there’s a saxophone buried deep in the mix while congas patter, and these subtle, fleeting touches give Animal Hospital the filmic weight of scenes stitched together rather than a collection of songs. This isn’t punk in any purist sense, and yet it carries punk’s edge. It isn’t a soundtrack album, but it constantly evokes cinematic imagery. Ganser are pulling from post-punk, no wave, art rock, and noir jazz to build a fully-realized world with its own sinister kind of cool.