Eclectic Los Angeles ensemble Garretson & Gorodetsky expand their long-running indie/underground sound with a darker, more experimental rock sensibility on new full-length Sunshine and Cyanide. The record captures a band comfortable with contradiction; political yet poetic, handmade yet expansive, intimate and orchestral at once. Sunshine and Cyanide follows 2025’s Change Things, which reached the Top Ten at numerous radio stations worldwide.

Slated for release tomorrow, February 13, Garretson & Gorodetsky have allowed listeners to get a sneak peak today. “We played through the album from start to finish last night in rehearsal and we noticed that there’s a fierceness to the progression of songs…A kind of awe in the wonder of this planet and then an outrage and defiance with the events in our country this year,” said Weba Garretson.  “But it’s not literal. Its not that all the songs specifically address what happened. It’s just that as musicians, as people, we processed our experience by making this music. It feels present.”

Recorded at the band’s Echo Park home studio, Catasonic, with producer/engineer Mark Wheaton, the album was made deliberately and without pressure. Rather than imposing a concept or agenda, the band allowed the songs themselves to dictate the process. “The songs are different, so your approach is different,” says guitarist and co-writer Ralph Gorodetsky. “There’s no agenda for that. It just changes.”

After working in a large commercial studio on the previous record, Garretson & Gorodetsky chose comfort and familiarity over formality. Tracking took place where the band rehearses and lives; in separate rooms, at their own pace, with breaks for food, conversation, and quiet. “The less unknowns, the less intrusive elements, the better,” Gorodetsky notes. “You just make the goddamn record as good as you can.”

At the heart of the project is the duo’s decades-long songwriting partnership. Weba Garretson and Gorodetsky have been writing together for over thirty years, a process that remains remarkably consistent: Gorodetsky arrives with a chord progression or riff, Garretson responds with melody and lyrics. Though Garretson & Gorodetsky have often performed as a duo, the current five-piece lineup – Garretson (vocals), Gorodetsky (guitar), Vince Meghrouni (woodwinds, multi-instrumentalist), Laura Grissom (bass), and Brian Christopherson (drums) – brings a depth of color and texture that fundamentally reshapes the music. With a full rhythm section and expanded instrumentation, the songs move from skeletal forms into layered, dimensional arrangements that retain their core identity while opening outward.

That expanded palette is audible throughout Sunshine and Cyanide. The album moves from raw, rhythm-driven political protest to atmospheric, exploratory compositions rooted in curiosity and wonder. The title comes from “Blue Hibiscus,” a meditation on the toxic air of Los Angeles, built on a dark, swampy groove that leans into gothic, psych-inflected rock textures. Elsewhere, songs like “Ghost,” “Inception,” and “Muse” confront anxiety, self-examination, and inner conflict, while “Cloud Streets” functions as a love song to science, drawing its lyrics directly from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “Paradise” resonates across personal and geopolitical terrain, written with Gaza in mind. As Garretson notes, “This is a Trump-era record,” shaped by a climate of unease, urgency, and resistance.

As a band, Garretson & Gorodetsky represent a rare convergence of two artistic worlds: the 1980s punk jazz scene of SST Records and the performance art tradition of Los Angeles. Gorodetsky was in the Universal Congress Of, Meghrouni in Bazooka and Christopherson in Saccharine Trust (1997-2017) with all three bands originating on SST. Grissom and Christopherson play in surf jazz instrumental group Tune to Me. Garretson was in the performance group SHRIMPS who toured nationally. She also acted in more than a dozen works by international video artist Bill Viola.

Across six releases – from Welcome to Webaworld (1995) and Puttanesca (2006) through Change Things (2025) and now Sunshine and Cyanide – Garretson & Gorodetsky have continued to write, perform, and evolve outside of trends or expectations. Though their songs can stand on their own in stripped-down form, the full band reveals new layers, textures, and emotional depth. The idea remains constant; the dimensions multiply.

Ultimately, Sunshine and Cyanide offers no prescribed takeaway. “I hope listeners get the same thing I do when I listen to music I like,” says Gorodetsky. “That’s a personal experience, whatever they bring to it.” As Greg Burk of METALJAZZ.COM observes: “G&G have often performed as a duo. This is a five-piece band, though, sounding like a unit and making the most of it.”