FEATURE:
Spotlight
PHOTO CREDIT: Dev Bowman
late to the brilliance of Gelli Haha. It is the stage name of L.A.-based artist, Angel Abaya. This is a musician and performance artist who has created a theatrical world called the ‘Gelliverse’. Her debut album, Switcheroo, was released on 27th June. I will end with a review of Switcheroo. Before that, there are a few interviews that are important to illuminate. For those who do not know about Gelli Haha, this will shine a light on her wonderful music and the infectious and vivacious Gelliverse. I am starting out with a recent NME interview that is well worth a full read:
“Make no mistake, Gelli Haha’s world – the Gelliverse – is joyously kaleidoscopic and bonkers. Her live shows are choreography-heavy spectacles, involving trampolines, pat-a-cake dances, inflatable dolphins and playground boxing matches being interrupted by bubble machines. Similarly, her recently released debut album ‘Switcheroo’ is equally inventive and quirky, hopscotching from the candy-floss electro of ‘Bounce House’ (the one-shot video to which resembles a Tumble Tots run by Devo) to the riotous hedonism of ‘Piss Artist’.
“Gelli Haha is a criminal you’d likely forgive and maybe befriend. Because she’s so cute, she gets a pass”
Speaking to NME from her home city of LA, ideas chaotically spill out of Abaya like candy from a piñata. Asked who Gelli is, the 27-year-old says she’s less an alter ego and more of a liberating philosophy. “This sounds woo-woo, but she’s my inner child,” she explains. “She’s this little girl that gets into mischievous situations. She’s a criminal you’d likely forgive and maybe befriend. Because she’s so cute, she gets a pass.”
As its title suggests, ‘Switcheroo’ is an exercise in reinvention; of experimenting with a persona, then realising, retrospectively, that it was your authentic self all along. In 2023, Abaya had reached an impasse. Having worked for eight years in various indie, folk and jazz bands in the Boise, Idaho music scene, the singer-songwriter had just moved to Los Angeles and released a heartfelt solo album ‘The Bubble’. Yet she was feeling unwelcome in her own life, as if her past was an ill-fitting outfit she’d grown out of. Teaming up with Sean Guerin from LA disco-revivalists De Lux, she wanted to think outside of the box.
Recorded using a variety of vintage synths and analogue effects, ‘Switcheroo’ plays in different sonic ballpits: ‘Funny Music’ ends abruptly with a Looney Tunes-style “BONK!” noise while the Italo disco of ‘Dynamite’ is interrupted by the sound of (what else?) a bear attack. On the breezy house of ‘Tiramisu’, she adopts the shrill vocals of a pouty Veruca Salt-esque child throwing a tantrum.
While tracks were scaffolded from instrumental demos Abaya had written, lyrics were frequently improvised in the studio. The noughties electroclash of ‘Spit’ lists words beginning with the letter S and peaks with the tongue-twister “Selby sells Shelby snails sans shells sick slick”. For ‘Normalize’, based on the 2005 Nigerian funk song ‘Nomalizo’ by Caiphus Semenya and Letta Mbulu, she consulted an online dictionary and sang the first nine words she found that ended in ‘ia’ (including homophobia, haemophilia, and paedophilia) – before declaring that she wants to “fly away”.
“There’s always a meaning to the songs, even if it isn’t clear to me in the beginning,” she elaborates. “I feel like we’re playing in a sandbox, digging up fossils of meaning. With ‘Funny Music’, I didn’t set out to write a song about my personal journey of healing my fear of expression, but I ended up doing it in a fun way. ‘Normalize’ is about wanting to escape from the woes of the world”.
Psychedelic Baby Mag spoke with Gelli Haha back in April. Heralding this weird and catchy music, it is clear that this is a very distinct artist. Adding something unique into the music world. I am new to Gelli Haha but can instantly tell that she is going to be around for a very long time. I do hope that there are U.K. dates in the future:
“What other types of musical projects were you involved in before this?
I got into the Boise music scene when I was 18, which was a decade ago. I was in a ton of bands, and I was also involved in a performing arts dance company. The dance company performed all over Boise, plus Vegas and Seattle and other places. I was in the company’s band, and eventually I became an assistant for them, and then when I was 21 or 22 I became the program director. I would say that experience was the most pivotal for me. Being in the band but also being involved in the production side is a lot of what inspired the Gelli project.
Do you think of Gelli as a solo project, or a band, or more like solo but with other contributors?
It’s all of that, really. I call the band the Gelli Company. I feel like anyone can be a Gelli. It’s a character that anyone can be. It’s fun, playful energy that anyone can embody. It’s collaborative. The music is really just me and Sean Guerin, who’s in the band De Lux. Nine of the 10 songs on the record are based on demos I made. And then Sean and I created a world from the demos. Sean’s very talented in the sonic space. So musically, it’s mostly just a collaboration between Sean and me. But there’s more collaboration in the performance part, between me and the dancers. I find a lot of joy in making this collaborative. I don’t believe I was meant to make art by myself. Part of the joy of my expression is to do it with other people.
When I listen to the record, I hear many different things, different genres and eras. What musical influences would you say inspired the songs?
I would say that for the identity of Gelli, I was inspired by Björk and Kate Bush. But Sean and I have also been listening to lots of late ‘70s/early ‘80s funk and boogie and experimental disco. And then he bought a bunch of old analog gear, like the kind of gear those people used. Animal Collective is another influence. I think originally the idea was this could be Animal Collective meets Kate Bush. But it ended up being something else. I think it’s tricky because you might feel like you’re hearing different influences, but personally I don’t think it sounds just like anything else. We wanted to make catchy music. But we wanted it to be weird. We felt like pop music is too boring and experimental music can be too unpalatable. So we wanted it to meet in the middle”.
Before getting to a review of Switcheroo, there is one more interview that I want to bring in. Baby Step Magazine spent some time with one of new music’s brightest artists. I am really excited to see where her future takes her. Having released one of this year’s best albums, I do wonder what is next for her. Championed by stations such as BBC Radio 6 Music, there is no telling quite how far she can go:
“Your music lives between Studio 54 and Area 51 — glamour and the bizarre. How does that surreal blend of influences come to life in the Gelliverse you’ve created?
I created the philosophy and foundation of the Gelliverse with my best friend, dancer/choreographer Selby Jenkins. In an early conversation I said the line, “somewhere between Studio 54 and Area 51” and Selby made sure to write it down. It’s really stuck with us through the process of creating the Gelliverse, the debut album, and the stage performance. I am inspired by many eras of New York City (though I’m based in LA), from 1920s vaudeville and flappers, to late 70s/early 80s art discos, to 90s/00s Club Kid/DFA era. I also grew very fond of the color red, and subsequently primary colors, and playful props like mini trampolines, inflatable bonkers, and dolphin balloons. We started talking about “the Gelliverse” when it became apparent we had created something that lived in its own strange world, with the goal that our community could also join in and go to this world with us.
The production on Switcheroo leans into intentional imperfection, with vintage gear and strange effects adding a chaotic charm. What’s the appeal of ‘flawed’ sound for you creatively?
I like the intentional imperfection because it feels more real and more FUN, though there are plenty of sounds and things that are “perfect” on the record, we wanted to create an illusion of imperfection, of messiness. I wrote and recorded Switcheroo with Sean Guerin. We love to be experimental and make tracks feel alive, weird, and mystical. Sean bought a ton of vintage analog gear while we were making the record that colored every track and shook things up.
You describe Switcheroo as an “inside joke turned theatrical spectacle.” What’s the story behind the album’s title, and how does it reflect the overall mood of the record?
Sean came up with the title. It just made sense. It’s silly but still indicative of transformation and change, and trying to embrace, accept, and enjoy it. There's a fascinating movement to the record that makes you do a switcheroo. You have to roll with the punches, or rather, the bonks ;) I love the playfulness of the title, it feels slightly deceptive but in an innocent prankster way. A criminal that you’ll likely forgive and maybe even befriend”.
The Quietus are among those who have handed out a celebratory and congratulatory review for Switcheroo. An essential debut album from the L.A. artist. Every song she puts out is hugely memorable and infectious Adding this fresh and personal energy and colour to music. If you are not following her already then endure that you do it now:
“Like an electroclash party inside a kids TV studio, Gelli Haha’s debut album Switcheroo is characterised by playfulness with a hedonistic, sometimes sinister bent. Gelli Haha is the pseudonym of LA-based artist Angel Abaya, who released a decent indie rock album, The Bubble, under her own name in 2023. She’s since eschewed this more conventional aesthetic to establish ‘the Gelliverse’ – a high-concept theatrical world of play from which the character of Gelli Haha emerged, an amalgamation of Pee Wee Herman, Marina Diamandis’ Electra Heart and a 00s electroclash party girl.
Switcheroo begins with a soaring, retro-futurist synth, as though Gelli is descending to earth from her disco ball home planet. The track’s title is ‘Funny Music’, but there’s a melancholy and rigour to the songwriting, even as it’s punctuated by daft sound effects and cut off by a huge ‘BONK’ at the end. Gelli speaks over the chaos as though in existential voiceover (“It’s all a hoax / it’s just a joke”) establishing a tension between pose and play that continues through the album as she tries on different personas. For ‘Johnny’ she’s a torch singer leaning louchely against a Casio keyboard; in ‘Spit’, she’s an aerobics instructor-cum-dominatrix commanding her submissives to “suck, smooch, snap, surrender” alongside a relentless beat; for ‘Bounce House’ she’s led by freewheeling childlike exploration, mixed with tongue-in-cheek suggestion (“Tell me, are you ready to tumble?”). Each song is stuffed full of electronic whizzes and kaleidoscopic synths, fizzy like static electricity.
In addition to these fantastical personas, Gelli also embodies a more down-to-earth narrator for ‘Piss Artist’, an all-out slice of debauchery in the middle of the record. Her girlish giggles transformed into guttural laughter, Gelli lays on the valley girl affectations as she recalls a wild night of partying (“Once she took her shirt off it was like, oh everyone can take their shirt off”), her droll spoken word bolstered by chunky electroclash beats. Celestial voices harmonise around her, suggesting that even the records earthier pleasures have transcendent properties. Party girls are of course currently in vogue or recently passé, depending on who one speaks to – but ‘Piss Artist’ is less Charli, more Princess Superstar and Kesha.
The after-party continues on the chaotic and funny ‘Tiramisu’, where Gelli’s voice turns even lazier, a half-arsed featured vocalist on a piano house track. “Whaaaat the heeeeell issss goooooing ooooon?” she repeats – well exactly! Seemingly tired of our earthly concerns, she ascends back to the skies during the excellently-titled closing song ‘Pluto is not a planet it’s a restaurant’, her long weaving vocal lines positioning her as Caroline Polachek with a better sense of humour. Switcheroo is tonnes of fun in its own right, but is also ripe with potential for further transmissions from the the Gelliverse”.
Truly an artist that you need to know about, this is merely the start for Gelli Haha. With the Gelliverese growing and expanding in the music sky, Angel Abaya has created something inclusive and irresistible! If you are among those who are unaware of her wonder, then go and follow her now. One of the most promising artists in the world and a future legend in my book, you really can’t…
SAY more than that.
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