Five years ago, Teethe’s debut record wound with a cadence resembling a jack-in-the-box: sonically clinging and gleaming like tin sheens in sunlight. It almost synced with a resting heart rate, lulling the listener into a somnambulistic state and an anxious anticipation for the terminal surprise of its winding. In the follow-up to their debut, Magic of the Sale, they finally leap out with unanticipated results, even if in hindsight, the developments seem latent.
Their second LP takes on bigger dimensions adorned with a diverse palette composed of a consistent troupe of versatile actors, elemental magnitudes, and a fresh air that lets it come to life in a familiar yet novel way. Much of the instrumentation orbits a center of percussion that remains methodical (but shines especially on “Holy Water”) and features the vocals of Boone Patrello and Madeline Dowd, who exchange the lead throughout the record, teetering between solemnity and rosy nostalgia. Occasionally, they synchronize, creating a unique texture that at times is choral (“Magic of the Sale”), at least when they are not weaving brief stanzas elongated in gently glimmering syncopations (“Tires & Bookmarks,” “Make It Red”).
The guitar work remains elusive in its variations, serving various roles: the drops and ripples on “Tires & Bookmarks,” spongy and accordion-like wheezing on the title track “Magic of the Sale,” or dense winds on “Iron Wine” and “China Day.” Additionally, the band’s heavily featured cameos, more than mere supporting characters, hold prominent roles in the fold. Xandy Chelmis, who is a part of Wednesday and performs in MJ Lenderman‘s backing band, contributes pedal steel, an important element on Magic of the Salethanks to its versatility and personality (atmospheric, twangy, or leading). It acts as one of many melodic doubling elements throughout the record, besides Patrello and Dowd’s concurrent vocals, or other guest cameos such as Charlie Martin’s piano (Hovvdy) and Emily Elkin’s cello.
What comes with an increase in instrumentation also entails a necessary growth in dimension. And the record, spatially, is not filled to the brim, but is rather open like the reverberant spaces of cathedrals. Teethe opens and preserves spaces for one another to bloom, fostering these intra-song ellipses that let these characters resound. Because of this, each melodic part can wander freely and flourish whenever one or another seizes the foreground in ear-catching brilliance (Chelmis on “Tires & Bookmarks,” Elkin on “Anywhere” or “Lead Letters,” or Martin on “Funny” and “Hate Goodbyes”).
Teethe is generous and earnest, and the intermixing of the contained cast allows them to dip into varying genres. They are at times slowcore, country, or “pillowcore” (initially a Hovvdy self-descriptor, now an emerging Texas subgenre known by waxing sentimental and incandescence, drawing elements of slowcore and lo-fi in the process). Despite these variations, they remain a distinctive, breathing being, which is surely due to the band’s chemistry and Patrello’s instincts in composition and arrangement. If anything, the compositions show the maturation of a group seemingly destined to discover further gradations and niches in the burgeoning southern slowcore genre. Different contrapuntal and doubling combinations of instrumentation also have an elemental force. For instance, “Magic of the Sale” moves with chanting torrents and spectral colors like sunlight through stained glass in a dusty, dim nave. Or “Holy Water,” which possesses a charged sensuality that maintains a sense of spiritual repose and gentle provocation.
They also lyrically chart their course toward the unknown, attempting to move toward an acceptance and movement with inevitable entropy (“Watch them crash the sand and bucket / Float / Off with the wind and water rushes / Crash” “Not built to last / I will learn to build and crash”). Teethe hail the ellipses of innocence between changes (When the ember is ash and the memory’s flat, let the innocence last) and the elusiveness (“It’s lost again / We’ll write it on the wall”), assurances (“Out on the porch swing, I’d push you forever / How could I forget that? I’ll always remember that”), and synesthetic echoes of memory (“Hear your words like photos felt in sound / Holding what our eyes can’t make up now”).
Magic of the Sale has Teethe traversing both lush and difficult dreams. They look back and reckon with the winding tumult and confusion of the path (“The path from which you came / Is heavy in its name”) and sanctify the pilgrimage (“And know hallowed be thy pain”). Though the path may make one weary, they do not seem to be discouraged in continuing; Epistolic requests are pressed toward that opaque unknown, desiring elevation in the immediate everyday (“Send a letter straight from the clouds / And place it into my hands,” “Send the ladder down”). The religious metaphors have lent themselves as amplifiers for Teethe’s dreamy and terrestrially agnostic world. However, that world is just dawning. To paraphrase the final line of poet Stanley Kunitz’s “The Layers,” Teethe is “not done with their changes,” and their world is turning its face toward further transformation.
Andrew Ha is a freelance art writer. He hails from Nashville and is currently based in Atlanta. Find more of his essay and memoir work here.
