Positively Furious

BABY GUTS
The Kissing Disease
Guilt Ridden Pop

It only takes a moment's contemplation. "Work," says drummer Rob Goswitz. "Rude people at work, who leave their carts all over the place. That's fuckin' annoying."

Laura Larson, who reclines near a drum of empty beer bottles on the top step of a swaybacked Uptown duplex, chimes in: "What about people in line on their cell phones?" Goswitz visibly fumes.

On an idyllic May afternoon, the members of Baby Guts enumerate the vexations that power their singular brand of grungy punk rock. For a minute or two, their examples touch on everyman, plebeian plagues of the modern age.

"When you're at a show," says Larson, who plays guitar and sings for the Minneapolis three-piece, "and the majority of people want to dance, there's always that one meathead guy who's trashed and huge and barreling through everyone and just wants to shove." Visibly discomfited, Larson makes fists.

But then the focus falls on bassist Taylor Motari. In a pair of stained Zubas, he crosses his legs.

"Injustice," he declares.

"Ooh," says Larson. "That's a good one."

Let's make this clear—Baby Guts are angry, and on The Kissing Disease, their debut full-length that follows the Gasoline EP and a 7" split with Unicorn Basement, it's all point blank. Within the album's 14 tracks, Goswitz's beats move from impassioned pound to hungover shamble in a single measure while Larson and Motari, audibly straining their strings, scream toward unintelligibility, seeming to approach exhaustion in each bridge and chorus. It's as if you can hear them falling apart in unison, collapsing in catharsis. The Kissing Disease is a fast and ruinous blunt force assault in which one can hear three generations of outsider anxiety, beginning with the Ramones and ending with Bikini Kill, crumbling like Athenian ruins.

"I'm not constantly angry," insists Larson. "But there are so many things to be angry about. There's so much bullshit in the world. I can't imagine Baby Guts not being a band that's angry."

Over a four-year career that has led them from all-ages venues to punk basements strewn about the Midwest to release shows at the Entry, Baby Guts have found plenty of grist for the mill. After playing in separate bands as high school students in Burnsville, Larson and Motari quickly bonded over a love of the Riot Grrrl movement, which produced the principled, acidic sounds of Bratmobile and Huggy Bear. Empowered by a shared manifesto, the group formed with Brandon Lenz on drums, later replaced by Goswitz (who had played previously with the Men Who Control the Weather). The lineup locked, they set about unifying themselves behind a theme that finds its way into much of their work.

"We're all feminists," says Larson. "And it's not a thing that we're afraid to say."

Motari nods intently. "We've never wanted to be the band that ignores gender," he says. "We wanted to jam it down your throat."

It's lamentable that the gender gap and its accompanying disparities are still in play, but the persistent chauvinism of rock audiences forces the issue, and in a time when many coed acts content themselves with more passive stances, Baby Guts turn their gender politics into a glorious face plant. Larson sees no reason to play nice.

"There's still people out there who think bullshit," says Larson. "I've been called a 'chicky.' I've heard it all. And I've seen other bands with girls in them totally avoiding the subject." She shakes her head, flummoxed and contemptuous. "But if you don't talk about it," she pleads, "you're still gonna get the creepy bloggers who are telling girl musicians they have nice legs!"

In rock, there is anger and then there is pessimism. The former is an empowering combustible, the latter a deadening depressive, and they are separated by a coil of razor wire. Treading that wire is a daredevil stunt, and Baby Guts pull it off with the self-sacrificial glory of Knievel at Snake River. They have perfected the art of turning anger into a virtue, a hammer and chisel with which they hew gritty punk miniatures from volcanic stone. It's the same brand of ingenuity that refined crude into gasoline.

"There are bands that can use anger in positive ways," says Larson, offering the Gossip as an example. "You can do it in a way where you connect with it, and it doesn't make you feel bad about being angry. It makes you feel empowered." After a pause, she shrugs and adjusts her shades on the bridge of her nose. "At least you know you're smart enough to be angry at bullshit, and you can do something about it."

"No one feels we're putting you down for screaming at a Baby Guts show," says Motari.

Attend a Baby Guts show, and you'll see what he means—the thrill touches potently on the frustrated passions that made adolescence such a doomed paradise. From crowd to band to amps to ears, it's a visceral exchange—Baby Guts hit hardest when their crowd cries out, and when Larson screams, they sweatily swoon. Their sound is a grisly middle passage, and it leads to camaraderie, a celebration of life and all its attendant frictions, played loud enough to melt glass.