The Future arrived Tuesday
No one knew, however
A girl packing her suitcase saying,
“Maybe now or never”
There is a bassline in Ganser’s Futuretripping that seems to know the economy is fake, the clocks are lying, and somebody somewhere is trying to sell you another subscription to tomorrow. Around it, Brian Cundiff’s guitars jab and veer while Alicia Gaines sings with the cool composure of someone watching the machinery malfunction exactly as expected. The result lands somewhere between Bikini Kill, The Breeders, and DEVO, all wired together by a song obsessed with time, delay, and the peculiar modern habit of waiting for permission to panic.
Futuretripping is a wiry, nervy post-punk offering built from elastic bass, restless guitar, and the kind of lyrical absurdity that makes modern life sound only slightly more ridiculous than it already is. Somewhere between The Breeders, Bikini Kill, and DEVO, the song turns anxiety about time, media, and collective hesitation into something sharp enough to dance to.
The track picks up the rhythmic intelligence that ran through Animal Hospital, the band’s third LP, while pushing the tension into a tighter frame. The bassline keeps the song in motion with a thick, spring-loaded bounce, while the guitar scratches and darts around it with nervous energy. Alicia Gaines sings with a dry, controlled delivery that gives the song’s stranger images room to land without forcing the joke.
The lyrics revolve around a world trapped in endless anticipation. Screens insist that everything is going according to plan, people wait for the next signal, and tomorrow becomes something they can apparently borrow from a shady acquaintance with the right connections. Ganser turns that uncertainty into deadpan comedy, presenting the future as another dubious commodity sold to people who have already spent too much of the present waiting around.
The image of someone selling umbrellas beneath a clear sky gets at the song’s humor perfectly. It is ridiculous, vaguely ominous, and just believable enough.
“Ahead of going on the road with Bikini Kill, I was interested in the concept of cheating time, where one could go for just a little more of it,” says Gaines. “After coming back from Europe earlier this year, we found our personal senses of time were distorted as we were dropped back into life in Chicago, mixing the mundane with the fantastical. Reaching into tomorrow for a little more of today became an inside joke, now Futuretripping.”
Cundiff frames that temporal confusion as something closer to collective agitation. “Everybody’s waiting for the sign to change,” he says. “People tend to wait around to be fed what they should react to these days, what to do, and I suppose there’s a bit of that restlessness in the music and lyrics as well. It’s an agitation that it’s not tomorrow while also wanting more time today, right now.”
Gaines also directs the accompanying video, which leans into a loose ’90s montage aesthetic, cutting random footage against the band performing beneath a bright blue sky. The editing has the same sideways humor as the song, constantly shifting between ordinary images and mildly surreal interruptions. Ganser leave us with a world where everybody is waiting for the sign to change while the sign itself appears to have wandered off.
Watch the video for Futuretripping below:
Chicago’s Ganser have spent the years since their 2018 debut Odd Talk developing an increasingly restless conversation between post-punk, noise rock, and art-school absurdity. Just Look At That Sky followed in 2020, while the 2022 EP Nothing You Do Matters brought Liars’ Angus Andrew into the producer’s chair. Bassist and vocalist Alicia Gaines and drummer Brian Cundiff remain central to the band’s writing, balancing physical rhythms with dry humor and an eye for the contradictions of everyday life.
Their third album, Animal Hospital, was released through Felte on August 29, 2025, with production shared by Ganser and Andrew. A deluxe edition followed on April 22, 2026, adding five alternate versions of songs from the record. Touring with IDLES, Mclusky, and Ted Leo has helped sharpen their live attack; this September, Ganser joined Bikini Kill for shows in Milwaukee, Chicago, Royal Oak, and Cleveland. Futuretripping, released September 10, extends that momentum with a new song written and arranged by Gaines and Cundiff.
For future live announcements and ticket links, visit Ganser’s official shows page.
Listen to Ganser’s Future Tripping below, and order the single here.
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