Alt band Guster, playing Archer Music Hall, keeps 'foot on the gas' while appreciating its past

ALLENTOWN, Pa. — Ryan Miller, singer/guitarist for the alternative rock band Guster, said taking five years between albums no longer fazes him.

After all, it's been more than two decades since Guster's biggest hit, "Amsterdam," and a run of popularity that saw it have five Top 10 songs on the Alt charts, including "One Man Wrecking Machine," "Careful" and "Satellite."

So the time lapse between Guster's latest album, 2024's "Ooh La La," and its previous disc, 2019's "Look Alive," didn't seem out of the ordinary, Miller said in a call from Grand Rapids, Michigan, the first stop on a tour that tonight, July 29, brings Guster to Allentown's Archer Music Hall.

“We’re into this over 30 years at this point, so I don’t know that we feel the necessity to release albums at a clip of every two years in the way that maybe we would have when we were starting," Miller said.

That's compounded by the fact that the band continues to want to push its boundaries, Miller said.

“I think we always try and do something different," and the band finds itself starting each new disc thinking about ‘What do we want to do next?’"

"And sometimes that takes a minute," he said. "What do I want? Where are we in relation to our fans? What do they want? How does that overlap with want we want? Does it matter?"

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Good Harbor Music

'The guiding principle'

That search for a fresh approach made Guster intentionally shift away from the “Look Alive,” which Miller said, "by design was a very cold, icy, molecular album."

"I think we were interested in, maybe, well, what’s the opposite attack we could take here?" he said. "Like, how can we be warm and organic and heartfelt?

"So that was kind of the idea, and it took us a long time."

The songs on "Ooh La La" also were influenced by the coronavirus, Miller said.

“There was lyrical stuff that was going on — it was written in the whole pandemic, so hard to not," he said.

"Being a band that writes about the existential nature of everything, is hard not to be holistic about what the ... is happening."

COVID-19 also interrupted the production and recording process, he said.

“Because it took so long, the songs sat around almost for a year, some of them, after we recorded them, which is pretty unusual for production," he said.

“But they sounded good a year later. So I think that was the guiding principle.”

The band has its own 'eras'

Guster's principle of keeping things fresh over its 30-year run also gave the group the ability to last year have its own career-retrospective "Eras" tour, ala Taylor Swift.

Like Swift's run, the tour looked at Guster's stylistic changes, but took it a step further, with not only props and costumes, but an actual script and stories.

"That felt super creative, even though it wasn’t necessarily about the songs," Miller said. "It required a lot of us looking at who we were as storytellers and songwriters and performers.

“I mean, I was really proud, maybe proudest, of how we came up with something that was really compelling as a concert that I had never seen before.

“I mean, no knock on Taylor, but she didn’t have a script — we wrote a script. We had this little, like, high school play embedded in it. And I think the thing I’m most proud of.

“We decided we had to take it everywhere because it was such a success. For us and our band and ticket-sales-wise, everybody, really."

Miller said, "the challenge, maybe not for every band, but the challenge for us, is how do you compel fans to come and see you for the 45th time?

"How can you surprise and delight and subvert their expectations of what a Guster show is?

“So in that sense, I was so proud. ‘Cause we didn’t know if it was going to work. And from the first night, it was like chaos, and, like, ‘Oh … this is going to work.’

“So now, I’m, like, ‘What do we do now?’” he said with a laugh.

'That means something'

Miller said he's proud that, over its career, Guster has “never really took our foot off the gas."

"We just did two nights with the national symphony at Kennedy Center that sold out, like, instantly," he said.

"We’re still really pushing forward in a lot of ways and hopefully that comes through on these records. Especially our last records, where nothing was phoned in.

“I would hope that, at this point, that approach is something that’s really cherished by our fans.”

But that doesn't mean Guster doesn't appreciate its early success — and the songs that gave that to the band, Miller said.

“Most artists, you kind of have to reject everything you’ve done in the past in order to keep moving," he said.

He said Guster recently appeared on a TV show with hitmaker Daryl Hall and, "he told us he’s writing the best songs of his life right now."

"I was, like, ‘Huh, maybe?'" Miller said with a laugh. "And maybe ‘Maneater’ is not as good of a song as you wrote yesterday, but it’s not going to be in the ether.

“So my perspective on the music changes as I get older. Like, is ‘Amsterdam’ a good song? I kind of think it is now. Did I think that five years ago? I don’t know.

“But when people come up and show me tattooed lyrics on their forearm, it’s like, ‘Oh sh-t, that means something.’”