Local punk band Loose Tooth released their debut full-length album, Easy Easy East, in April. With a punk mentality that comes in the form of fast, to-the-point songs, Loose Tooth also brings in grungy tones and an overall loose vibe.
It’s hard to pin down one thing that makes Loose Tooth’s tunes so engaging. The stringy guitar riffs bend and bleed together, the drums come across as powerful and technical, and the music will build into loud, discordant sections or wind down into even more disorderly passages with ease. Through all its speedy moments and slower ones, Easy Easy East has an unmistakable momentum that comes from barreling forward with a sense of carefree grit. The vocals further that mood with a variation of shouts and clean singing, while describing feelings of indifference and simple pleasures like drinking black coffee or getting drunk. The lyrics sit in the mix so that they are audible yet hard to make out, which helps keep your attention on the overall feel and movement of each track, rather than any particular instrument. With such tangled and rough instrumentation, the result is an appealing and rugged record.
“Pickwick Average” sways between harmonious and dissonant, driven by animated riffs and exuberant drum fills. “Lizzy,” which was also featured on a split EP, is one of the quicker tracks on the album, and cuts through with a memorable, bouncing riff and raspy shouts. The song rages for about a minute, seemingly falls apart, and gets put back together by an awesomely messy guitar riff to end on a note of upbeat mania. The most personal song comes on the retrospective slow-burner “Yorami”, where the vocalist exclaims “we could have never worked things out, we could have never worked” while the second half takes a more positive yet regretful approach, “we could have worked things out, we could have worked.”
Easy Easy East feels like it was schlepped together in the most dynamic way possible. The twisting riffs and energized drumming make for disheveled and forceful instrumentation, while the lyrics can be goofy (see “Sunk Chubi”) or sincere (see “About Everything Ruined”). Ultimately, their grungy sound and contagious hooks, both instrumentally and vocally, make for an album that deals with struggles in a jerky and lively manner.
Download Easy Easy East here, and order a tape from Fleeting Youth Records here. Loose Tooth is playing this Thursday, August 6th, at Everybody Hits with Rozwell Kid, Soda Bomb, and Crybaby. Get more information here.
Photo by Peter Murray.
PhillyPunk 