THE DELI

Dead Tooth’s EP Pig Pile (Trash Casual / Academy Fight Songs) lives up to its title and then some featuring not only “pig piles” but also the aforementioned swine piled onto piles of sheep (an image from the EP’s title song and cover art!) not to mention the packs of white wild wolves eyeing your coop and soft white doves conspiring with savage baboons to make a man out of you and then of course there’s the hawks and fury’d doves flying off white horses bucking hard and spitting blood knee high in crude oil and that’s just to paraphrase a few of the animal-related lyrics on the record. 

So clearly we’re talking less “docile petting zoo” and more “insurrectionary animal farm” because the beasts on Pig Pile are mad as hell and they’re not gonna take it anymore which is more than justified and I wouldn’t be surprised if they invited Orca, Cujo, and Willard’s rodent friends over for later.

In the interim since Dead Tooth put out their debut EP Still Beats the DT’s spent their Plague Years pretty productively by putting out a clutch of compelling stand-alone singles including a summer beach party jam (see below) plus two collaborations with Darius VanSluytman from electro-soul rockers No Surrender and a cover version of a well-known disco anthem transformed into a yearning dirge about trying to survive, and thus they could have easily put out a full LP’s worth of material if they’d just thrown all these other songs onto the "Pig Pile" but there’s a reason "EP" rhymes with "integrity" I suppose.

Pig Pile sees Dead Tooth up the ante on their already nervy and dirty post-punk with six gnarly, gnarled songs full of intertwining guitar and no shortage of shredding (shredded guitar is rich in fiber!) ably anchored by the roustabout rhythms of drummer Dylan DePice and bassist Jason Smith who provide ballast for the vocal musings of head songwriter Zach Ellis aka Zach James aka The Adventures of the Silver Spaceman as he pivots between ranting-and-raving-street-preacher-who-may-actually-be-a-derelict-prophet mode (“Hell Shack,” “Pig Pile,” "Hollow Skin") and slapback-echo-laden-Lux-Interior-in-baritone-tones mode (“Nightmare America") and full-on-crooning-slow-burn-building-to-a-head-and-heart-clutching-climax mode (“Blind,” “Riverboat”).

To the ears of this listener all this rampant Pig Piling resonates strongly with the contemporary moment in all its weird-mixed-up dread and euphoria glory whilst spinning around on a planet playing chicken with its own fate at least until all those chickens come home to roost. And “Blind” is a prime example building up gradually like a suspense movie soundtrack equal parts ominous and intoxicating (that chorus tho!) and the same goes for the eerily beautiful feral-fever-dream postindustrial walkabout music video featuring the animal graces of dancer/choreographer Nola Sporn Smith and maybe all this is tied to Zach’s skateboarding past too and the Platonic ideal of living forever in-the-moment whilst teetering on the edge but who knows.

If you wanna "read more about it" re: the history of Dead Tooth and about their creative process and all that sorta stuff then you could start by watching the interview above and then by clicking on some of the hyperlinks found in this piece but the quick version is that the band was borne out of a chance encounter between our man Zach and one Andrew Bailey while both employed at a vegan diner near Brooklyn’s fabled Sweatshop Rehearsal Studios (RIP) and at the time the former didn’t even know the latter played (and still plays) guitar in a scrappy little band called DIIV who likewise know a thing or two about joining together tension, bliss, and catharsis.

And finally just to make sure you’re all up to date (that’s our job!) the Dead Toothers spent the past week down in Tejas playing SXSW culminating with the Austin EastCiders X BdBK X Our Wicked Lady showcase, and not too long before that they were victorious in the OWL Winter Madness Battle of the Bands (who needs "March Madness" sports yuck!) which led to an officially designated sponsorship by CHEETOS® brand Crunchy FLAMIN’ HOT® Cheese Flavored Snacks so here’s hoping some of that hot processed cheese-puffery fairy dust rubs off on the rest of us because we’re animals like that. (Jason Lee)

Repping NYC at SXSW this coming Wednesday…

I’m not sure which benign deity brought the twin-sister dark electronica duo known as MOTHERMARY into our plane of existence (Lilith? Kali? Ishtar? Cher? Dolly?) but we owe them a debt of gratitude because not since the heyday of Prince and Madonna have there been two such solid proponents for eroticizing religious dogma which is great for Christianity in particular with its central conceit of “original sin” where being tempted to enjoy a piece of deciduous by a sexy wifey made from your own rib is grounds for the eternal damnation of humankind not to mention eternal shame at our own nakedness. 

And then it doesn’t help matters when a few millennia later these same humans somehow managed to murder God’s only son in a particularly gruesome fashion and all this is without doubt deeply guilt-inducing and deeply unsexy. Or is it?

MOTHERMARY offer strong evidence to the contrary on their debut full-length I Am Your God released in late January and they know what they’re talking about because Elyse Winn and Larena Winn were raised in a devout Mormon household in Missoula, Montana (where a deep love for music was self-reportedly instilled alongside the Mormonism) and both attended BYU before moving to Salt Lake City and eventually NYC (first Elyse and later Larena) and recording their debut single “Catch Fire” which caught the attention of their friend Alex Frankel who’s also one-half of synthpop duo Holy Ghost! (how appropriate!) who passed it along to Megan Louise at Italians Do It Better which is basically the go-to label for cooly restrained yet highly and sublimely dramatic electro music—kind of like Italo-disco on steroids and tranquilizers at the same time—a perfect fit for the duo and their own melding of kewl and hawt, sinful and angelic.

And speaking of hotness “Catch Fire” is smoking hot—all swelling organs and throbbing bass and pulsating rhythms accompanied by Johnny Jewel-style synth-tom fills (RIP Chromatics and the fabled Dear Tommy LP) with lyrics from the POV of the sneaky snake in the Garden of Eden (see the truth when / it’s in the nude / taste the fruit / put the blame on me) and geez if Tipper Gore ever heard this song she’d likely have an aneurysm on the spot nevermind if she saw the music video we’re talking heart attack (brief synopsis: Bible study group/faith healing ceremony transforms into a polymorphously perverse strip club complete with crucifix tossing and leather-studded-slow-motion gyrating by Elyse and Larena).

But it’s not all “hotness for hotness’s sake” as MOTHERMARY point out I Am Your God “isn’t about a god complex, it is an invitation to ponder what you worship. It’s about women reclaiming their holiness and inviting you to acknowledge your own…it is a mirror to religion both reflecting the bad and salvaging the good” with the very name MOTHERMARY being “the ultimate symbol of religi[ous] hypocrisy & the insane expectations placed on women…These two extremes. Have children to procreate, but don’t be sexual beings.” The Madonna/Whore complex is an impossible needle to thread for sure but on the album’s most recent single and music video (title track “I Am Your God”) the Winn twins come pretty darn close with a song that floats by on ethereal clouds of airy heavenly electronic oscillations, but it’s equally voluptuous and lusty (and a bit creepy with that pitch-shifted vocal) with the repeated line “I can come again” straddling the same line between holy and horny.

I guess guilt is complicated that way when you think about it—it’s an age-old tool for subjugation (especially used against women natch) but keeping people form what they want and need only builds desire upon desire and before long they’re developing some pretty elaborate fantasies and fetishes to redirect some of that energy not to mention making cool art and beautiful music to express their frustrations and longing not to mention how it makes being bad feel so good so guilt is a volatile thing to say the least. 

But enough of this music blogger’s theological thoughts! In closing it should be mentioned that some of I Am Your God was created together with compatriot/co-producer Chris McLaughlin with whom Elyse Winn likewise collaborates on the Cigar Cigarette project fronted by Chris where she takes on the role of co-composer, art director and music video director, and by the way MOTHERMARY direct or at least co-direct all their own music videos which makes sense given their backgrounds in art and theater alongside music plus “sacrilegious spectacle” of course and if the “Pray” video below doesn’t deliberately riff on Garbage’s glorious video for “Queer” I’ll eat my hat!

And so let’s pray all these beneficent forces keep working together and spawning more (un)holy ravishing music because the world really needs it and I’d even be willing to try and guilt them into it. (Jason Lee)