Loose Tooth
Melbourne duo Loose Tooth face the light in their sophomore album New Age. 11 tracks, 5 years in the making - New Age marks a striking return for the band, exploring new themes of motherhood, grief, politics and identity in the sunny punk rock style that the band are renowned for.
Friends since crèche and bandmates since age 14, Nellie (guitar) and Etta (drums) have been prolific members of the Melbourne music community since 2016’s EP Saturn Return. Debut album Keep Up was released on Milk! Records in 2018, ossifying the band’s knack for blending doo-wop harmonies with fuzzy riffs and earning praise in Clash, Line Of Best Fit, The Music and more, with PBS FM describing it as “raw, lived-in pop courtesy of countless nights shared at the precipice of a barstool”.
With a title nodding to both woo-woo esotericism as well as a period of immense change, New Age upholds the Loose Tooth spirit of creating simple melodic earworms driven by guitars and drums. As opposed to being road-tested live, these songs were built from the ground up in the studio - sounding more production-heavy than what we've heard previously from the band: delightful harmonies colour pointed lyricism, and synthy interludes give way to soaring grunge guitar moments.
There are undeniable nods to 70s rock favourites like Fleetwood Mac or Steely Dan in the layered singalongs in ‘New Passion’, and ‘Bianca Meyers’ - an ode to a profound experience with a psychic - features backing vocals as captivating as a crystal ball. Covering themes as broad as grief and loss (‘Suffering’, ‘Light Of Day’) to the inequities of the housing crisis (‘Buy Into Something’), the almost indistinguishable voices of Nellie and Etta throughout the record makes New Age ultimately sound like a lifetime of friendship.