The pure, theatrical chaos of Gut Health

After all, dealing with the world's problems is far easier with an outlet that encourages such reactions. The weapon the Australian six-piece are wielding on this quest of theirs is an unapologetic, frenetic, flurry of punk attitude infused with jazz and party-ready rhythms.

Gut Health came to be when vocalist Athenia Uh Oh and bassist Adam Markmann met during Australia’s lockdowns in 2021. Becoming each other's ‘intimate partner’ – a person whom they were only allowed to see – it was in this hyper-focused honeymoon phase that they discovered their musical tastes had several crossovers. They roped in Markmann’s former bandmate Dom Willmott on guitar, drummer Myka Wallace from the local scene, and guitarist Eloise Murphy-Hill through a mutual friend. Rounding out the lineup was Angus Fletcher — originally a stand-in for Wallace — who stuck around on synths and percussion. With the six-piece sealed in both figuratively and literally, their first demos came together over remote sessions.

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The joyous concoction they landed on is a result of their many varying influences, including pulling from the genre-clashing 70s and 80s, where punk rumbled with dub, and jazz with hardcore. Decked out in a suitably theatrical pin-stripe suit fresh from a rehearsal session ahead of their upcoming shows – including at Berlin’s Pop-Kultur festival at the end of this month – Uh Oh explains, “We were really into this idea of there should be more of a crossover of genres…we wanted to take that same attitude, because we all have such different tastes in music,” she says. “I didn't want to be tied down by one specific thing, but still having these core loves.”

While the sounds are certainly packed with energy akin to an effervescent multi-vitamin tablet, there’s a sense of fun that also comes alongside it. This is by design: when piecing together how they wanted to carry themselves, it was important to keep things as light as possible. “Having a space to be a little more tongue in cheek, a little more I don't give a fuck,’ Uh Oh tells me.

It’s why most of their writing also comes from improvisation. Uh Oh’s lyrics tend to be streams of consciousness as much as they are notes from her phone. “Some of the lyrics are about the fact that we are so multifaceted, and there are two sides to everything,” she explains. Ruminations on the human spirit often come through their visuals, which draw as much from cabaret as they do from chaos. “Even on [2024’s Stiletto], you can see that on the cover, these two sides,” Uh Oh says of the striking art of the titular shoe crushing a red ball from behind a red velvet curtain. “Whether that's your dominant and submissive self, whether that's light and dark…there are waves to everything.”

Once they’d made sense of what they were channelling and fine-tuning their sound, Gut Health set about breaking out of their four walls. Playing their first gig at a bowls club, they were champing at the bit. “We wanted to get out there and gig relentlessly and just be in the world, because we hadn't had that in ages,” Uh Oh remembers. “We played so many gigs, through the community putting us on lineups, that felt like 1000 rehearsals, almost. We very much started as a live band and sort of built things from there.”

Being in the Melbourne area meant that Gut Health had a welcoming array of locations and stages to play. While starting with pubs and smaller rooms, it wasn’t long before they wound their way through the post-punk scenes and figured out where they fit into the space at large. There was even a New Year's Eve gig at an electronic-based ‘bush doof’ celebration. It’s thanks to their fluid, energy-fueled, coalesced sonics that they can inhabit these varying spaces. Uh Oh does acknowledge that it would be easier for them if they were to fit into one box, “Maybe that will be less confusing for people,” she says. “But at the same time, we feel grateful that we're being accepted by these different people and can go watch their gigs and be so inspired and take something from different areas.”

They see themselves as a live band more than anything – it’s all in the communal experience and the theatrics. Uh Oh explains that the shared feeling of being in a space enjoying one moment with a crowd is where the joy comes from. “Whether it's escaping for a moment or putting your phone away, or the noise of the world, through this noise and this chaos to hopefully find catharsis and rage," she tells me. While Uh Oh’s lyrics are her reaction to the messiness of the world, she’s keen to stress that they still want people to take whatever they attribute to the meaning: “Essentially, it's just a sound-wall experience, as tacky as that sounds,” she laughs.

With their self-released debut single “Inner Norm” coming in 2022, and a debut EP coming hot after, Gut Health have been on a learning curve. The EP, Electric Party Chrome Girl, was recorded at a group of storage units in Brunswick, where hardcore and punk bands also rehearsed. They then took it down the corridor to a producer friend, who then mixed and mastered it. This DIY urge to take their creation and give it proper life extended into their debut album, 2024’s Stiletto. It bottles their frenetic energy, a product of their endless stream of gigging, with most songs finding their flesh on the stage. Yet their limited resources meant Gut Health had to rally around their close friends who were able to assist in the endeavour.

Uh Oh’s evolution into her stage moniker has been a pivotal part of the band's evolution. Laying the dramatic groundwork by presenting their tracks with endless streams of attitude and vivacity, while she plays the posturing leader and voice of the band with an astounding natural ability, she knows the growth into this has been an adjustment “As someone who doesn't traditionally go like, Oh my God, look at me,” she says. “I do love performing and I love being high femme, I love getting out there, and I think that there's such a special thing in that process. But I'm not all about the All Eyes On Me sort of thing. As a band, it's all about the six of us connecting and feeling that out.”

Anchoring around connection and communal spaces – from the ones that helped nurture them when they were a fledgling project, to the faces they’ll return to in the coming weeks after a brief European stint last year – this is what it's all about for Gut Health. “When I get up on stage, it sounds so corny, but it is just unleashing this thing that you can live in,” she explains. “It's this cathartic moment that exists for a certain period, and that's what we say our music is about.”

The end goal is for this to continue translating. They want that dance and rage to go hand in hand, and as the shows keep coming, the Gut Health party wants to give the world an outlet in these twisted times. “We want our audience to feel what we feel that on stage, you know, lose a sense of yourself and step into this and be like, What the hell just happened?” she explains.

“That's very much the intention behind the music, and what I feel as a performer when on stage,” she closes. “But this really is a vehicle to consensually let out that anger, or that rage about the world – and feeling that rage for a lot of people as well. It's a cathartic space.”