Crooked Teeth – Honey EP
Despite their good intentions to be both colourful and out of the ordinary, Crooked Teeth's latest effort fails to tap into the trio's clear potential
Stop us if you’ve heard this one before – a California-based boy-rock-band that deliver fast-paced, eccentric pop-punk with a touch of tongue-in-cheek playfulness. Sounds familiar, right? While that may be a fairly standard description of plenty of popular bands within the alternative scene nowadays, Crooked Teeth are a group gaining momentum for setting out to be a little bit different than the rest of the pack.
Having recently earned the step-up to sign with Rise Records, the trio’s new EP Honey points towards their assured, punch-packed sound growing in confidence, with some of the record showcasing interesting dynamics and better production. Tracks like Hate Me and Broken Bones are highly animated, and bursting with hooks and exuberance, combining trickling synths with gutsy distortion to create a vibrantly rich and enticing mix of noises.
While Honey is both creative and an attempt to differ from the generic pop-rock sound, it does suffer the unfortunate fate of falling into rather familiar territory. In fact, the record feels a tad too similar to a collection of the songs that Texan-trio Waterparks were releasing a few years ago, playing to their all-too-homogenous, sparkling, tippy-tappy electronics, skittish vocal melodies and dramatic voice modulation. Sure, every track is almost certainly infectiously good, bouncy fun, but this easy-going nature comes at the expense of a full-out exploration of the original electronic-punk that it threatens to be.
Honey isn’t a bad record by any means, and actually attempts to offer more than a lot of alt-rock bands with its use of whimsical, electro-tinged vigour. Yet, while it’s sweet on the surface, there’s a lack of substance that forcefully holds Crooked Teeth back from releasing the promise they keep within themselves.
Listen to: Hate Me, You and Me (Whatever), Broken Bones