Baby Bones Premiere “Bottom Breather” from The Curse of the Crystal Teeth
Posted in audiObelisk on March 27th, 2018 by JJ Koczan
Punk-infused heavy rockers Baby Bones will issue their debut full-length, The Curse of the Crystal Teeth, on April 14 through Gubbey Records. One wonders if the title isn’t a reference to the proven-to-be-a-myth phenomenon of ‘meth mouth,’ but by the time you’ve considered it, thought about all the pictures of gross teeth you saw on the news before opiates became ‘the thin’ again — though I hear meth, like disco, is making a comeback — and googled that Slate article from 2005 that basically painted the whole thing as a class issue and made everyone feel like a jerk, the Louisville, Kentucky, trio are already through the six-track run of the record itself, which tops out at 17 minutes long, ending with the foreboding sample of a woman crying and warning, “I tell my friends to keep your babies close to you. There’s someone out there.”
Of course, by the time you’ve done another round of googling to try and find the source of that sample, Baby Bones are front-to-back once more on The Curse of the Crystal Teeth, which if I haven’t gotten the point across yet is a quick listen. All but one of its component tracks — third cut, “We’re Done Talking,” is the exception — are under three minutes long, and much of the tempo and coursing progression of a song like “Pay us in Dimes” owes itself to rockabilly and classic surf punk, but with a corresponding thickness of tone, one might think of Baby Bones stylistically as a Midwestern cousin to Fatso Jetson. 
Opening with the brisk but melodic “Bought the Farm,” which shifts into an angular, quirk-laden midsection before rounding out by reviving its earlier progression at a sprint and veering into a noisy freakout to finish, The Curse of the Crystal Teeth sets a tone early of being deceptively complex in its changes, and both “Pay us in Dimes” and “We’re Done Talking” hold to that, the latter with Dave Rucinski evoking a post-grunge vocal sensibility alongside his bass, guitar, the guitar of Thomas Burgos and the drums of Jason Brandum — gang shouts of one leading to start-stop riffing and a groovy slowdown that crashes into the like-minded start-stop opening of “Bottom Breather,” which touches on Queens of the Stone Age in vocal melody but remains rawer in its overall sound, turning to a nodding riff seemingly out of nowhere in its second half like younger Melvins before they started believing their own hype and cruising to an easy finish.
That of course leads to the harsher immediacy of “On the Take,” which is the shortest track here at 2:33 and spares nothing in its thrust but bridges a gap between more shouted and cleaner-sung vocals while the guitars work up a torrent of noise that builds to ahead just before 1:45 in and returns the trio to an upward swirl of noise underscored by Brandum‘s steady drums, which crash to mark the ending and begin at an immediately punctuating run on closer “Slick Shoes,” which offers few surprises ultimately but uses noise as a transitional element effectively and shifts between semi-spoken and sung vocals in the verse and chorus, allowing for a richer stylistic feel than otherwise might’ve showed up as Baby Bones slammed into the finish and that aforementioned sample, which is the only one on the short album. Clearly there’s meant to be some threat of violence between that and the band’s moniker, but it’s vague and never seems to really come to fruition in the songs, which is something of a relief, actually.
Not necessarily reinventing the wheel, but burning its tires out at good speed, Baby Bones‘ The Curse of the Crystal Teeth is a raw but aesthetically engaged, short debut long-player that I’d probably call an EP were it not for the fluidity with which the material draws together. I’m fortunate enough today to be able to premiere “Bottom Breather,” which you’ll find on the player below, followed by a quote from the band and more background courtesy of the PR wire.
Please enjoy:
Thomas Burgos on “Bottom Breather”:
“The second single from Baby Bones, ‘Bottom Breather,’ musically speaking, encompasses a feeling of drowning with a dichotomy of syncopated guitars and a familiar 4/4 drumbeat leading you to believe everything is OK. But that’s just the surface. As the song states, ‘So still, from shore/Turbulent below,’ so too does the song appear calm and collected as hook-filled bridges drag you further and further below its mighty depths challenging conventional interpretation of what rock music is and should be.”
Louisville, Kentucky-based surf punkers BABY BONES are proud to announce the release of their debut album, The Curse of the Crystal Teeth, due out April 14 via Gubbey Records.
Recorded by the band at Tin Pan Basement Studios in Louisville and mastered by Nick Zampiello at New Alliance East in Cambridge, Mass., The Curse of the Crystal Teeth is 17-minutes of riff-oriented acid rock made by veteran punks bent on global domination.
BABY BONES is the compilation of three forces within the local Louisville, Kentucky, music scene. The trio recorded their first song together in 2016 for the highly-publicized “We Have A Bevin Problem” compilation, a response to Kentucky’s attacks on reproductive rights, benefiting Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky. In doing so, the trio propelled themselves into an unknown–but bright–trajectory towards the cosmos.
BABY BONES is:
Dave Rucinski – Guitars, Bass, Vocals
Thomas Burgos – Guitars
Jason Brandum – Drums
