garretson and gorodetsky - sunshine and cyanide - catasonic

LOS ANGELES, CA - Garretson & Gorodetsky are very pleased to announce that their new LP Sunshine and Cyanide will be released on February 13th, 2026. 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. 

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.”

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.

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.”