Where have The Gufs been for the last 15 years? Until recently, the last recorded output we’d heard from the Milwaukee quartet was the 2006 album, A Different Sea — which featured one of the band’s finest songs, “Beautiful Disaster.” After that came sporadic and selective local shows over the years, including a pair of sold-out 30th anniversary performances at The Pabst Theater.
Now, one month shy of the silver anniversary of their 1995 self-titled major-label debut, The Gufs will reunite once again for Summerfest. The band formed at UW-Milwaukee in 1988, and all four original members remain. In addition to a back-catalog that contains several studio albums, and a handful of memorable singles, The Gufs will have at least two new songs to perform.
During the coronavirus lockdown last year, the band recorded “One” and “Hero” individually across four different studios. The new singles embrace everything that endeared The Gufs to alt-rock fans in the first place — a fuzzy sound tempered by Goran Kralj’s sweet lead vocals along with moderate influences from R.E.M., Gin Blossoms and fellow Milwaukeeans BoDeans — while still sounding contemporary, relevant and undaunted.
While The Gufs were on their latest hiatus, Kralj stayed busy. He recorded two solo albums under the name “Goran” (2019’s Under A Nashville Sky and 2020’s Airports & Alibis) as well as a single about the pandemic, “When This Is Over.”
