Gelli Haha : Switcheroo
It’s almost a little too on the nose. The first song on the debut album by Gelli Haha is called “Funny Music,” but despite the L.A. artist’s insistence that “it’s just a joke… it’s all a hoax,” there’s far more going on here than just a cheap gag. With its juxtaposition of bassy pulse, fluttery synth melody and dreamlike atmosphere, “Funny Music” is a gorgeously urgent introduction to Gelli Haha’s multi-colored musical world, a euphoric vision of a dance-music utopia where the dress code mandates bright primary colors over shades of black. But just as the song’s sense of intoxicated bliss takes over, Gelli Haha abruptly ends on an extremely goofy “BONK!”
The project of singer/songwriter Angel Abaya, who introduced herself in 2023 with a set of more conventional indie rock songwriting, Switcheroo is a brilliantly absurd set of synth-pop that reimagines the electroclash of the early 2000s with a little more impish pranksterism and a little less sleaze. (Notable exception: “Piss Artist,” a continually compelling sequence of NC-17 weirdness about peeing in a glass jar, going topless and hallucinatory observations such as “the floor is on the bed.”) Abaya cites the likes of Björk, Kate Bush and Animal Collective as influences, but in practice Switcheroo is more of a surrealistic cartoon than an ornate daydream.
The production throughout Switcheroo is big on beats, bass and maximum danceability, as Abaya deftly works her way through a linguistic gantlet. The pulsing hallucination of “Spit” is built on a hypnotic groove and a Sesame Street-like recitation of sibilant s-sounds, the most climactic of which is “Surrender, surrender!” The Nigerian boogie-inspired “Normalize” is an exercise in mellifluous word dissociation (“diphtheria, arrhythmia, cornucopia, pedophilia“). And the bubbly, house-inspired piano-plunker “Tiramisu” makes hay of similar sounding phrases, juxtaposing “Tiramisu” with “dear, I miss you.”
There’s little on Switcheroo you could call earnest, though the immaculate closer “Pluto” comes the closest to unfiltered directness—glittery, dreamy and beautiful, ending a giddily disorienting listening experience with a gorgeous look up at the stars. It’s one twinkling piece in a ROYGBIV mosiac that, despite Abaya’s claim that it’s all a joke, is seriously fun.
Label: Innovative Leisure
Year: 2025
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