New Music Monday: Gurr

How many times have you said to your best friend, “That’s the name of our band,” or “Let’s just quit our jobs and start a band already”? Until that dream becomes reality, Berlin surf rock duo Gurr can scratch that BFF-band itch. Andreya Casablanca and Laura Lee met in 2012 while taking an American Studies class at their Berlin university, and started playing music together immediately thereafter. Only one of them actually studied abroad in California (Casablanca, at UC Santa Cruz), but the American West Coast has left an indelible imprint on the pair’s buoyant, surf-influenced garage rock. In their latest video, “Walnuts,” Gurr captures in both sound and visuals the carefree feeling of cruising down a long stretch of road with with the windows down and your best friend riding shotgun. 

Gurr describes its own sound as “garagepop [sic] that sounds like a trashy 60’s girl group meshed with poppy vocals in two voices and a flavor of eeriness dug out from the deep darkness that is the Berlin rocknroll bar’s restroom at 5 am.” That description captures the band’s quiddity twofold. First, it’s a highly descriptive collection of musical markers. And second, it’s rich with the kind of specific shared imagery and memory on which close friendships are built. Don’t know exactly what a Berlin rock bar’s bathroom looks or feels like at 5am? That’s ok. Gurr does. Whether you’re in on their secret is less important than that they get to tell you about it anyway. 

In My Head, Gurr’s debut full-length, comes out October 14th on Duchess Box Records.