Albums
Hustle Beach
2009
Genre: Alternative
Release Date: 2009
By Eric Harvey
Reviewed July 14, 2009
Integration of FM-era pop, from glam to power pop, bandannaed cock-rock and New Romanticism, shouldn't come this easy, or sound this good.
To say that "Big Schools", the opening track on Baby Teeth's third album, is both a patience and litmus test is true, but it's also far from the Chicago trio's fault. The song, about meeting a chick at an awesome frat party and more generally about how great it was to go to a college with a monstrous enrollment, is played earnestly and without a whiff of irony, like Robert Pollard with his leg kicks and British affectations, or Brandon Flowers doing whatever Brandon Flowers does. It then becomes a matter of my own taste that I find it so hard to sign off on beer-bongs and cornhole as the source of viable cultural expression, even when it's done well, as it is here. Even more, I realize the irony in that I have no problem with Thin Lizzy's bro-down "The Boys Are Back in Town", which Baby Teeth use as the foundation for "Schools". Hell, even Steely Dan's "My Old School" was at least about a .