#eager teeth

 There’s an undercurrent of mathy complexity that occasionally emerges from amongst the poppy alt-rock that dominates. In particular, New Bones (I Gotta Know) has this fantastic tappy intro that crashes into this riff-laden energetic section. This repeats through the song and gives it a nice turbulent quality. I really feel the production and musicality is less polished and more honest which sets them apart from more clean-cut acts like LTA.

  I Decided Long Ago is a much faster, punk-inspired 43 second barrage. I love the line “I’m not singing the right songs” – Eager Teeth is made up of veteran underground musicians.  It doesn’t really fit into the rest of the record at all which I like, but it’s slotted right next to The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things which is a super slow interlude. This marks a kind of schism in the record; I feel the back half is much less inspired and more poppy. The very worst of this is the undeniably catchy repeated “I know you know I know you know”, which ruins Somehow, a perfectly good song otherwise. Your Life Could Change is the exception to the top-heaviness; I really feel it has some cracking guitars in the second half.

One thing I thought was consistently good throughout was the quality of the vocals. They’re at times croony and soulful (Think Glassjaw or more recently Don Broco) but can then snap to barks and snarls when required.  I believe overall that this album represents good music by passionate people inspired by music they grew up with and never fails to be energetic and often succeeds in being entertaining. I do feel that its too poppy to be taken seriously by music snobs and too musically complex to be appreciated by younger music fans of the LTA generation. So its kind of placed in this crossover zone of little appeal, which is a real shame.  

3/5

Reviewed by Tom Naughton