Dead Tooth’s sound has a welcome dissonance. The group, fronted by Zach James, creates a sort of dystopian post-punk alongside DIIV lead guitarist Andrew Bailey, balancing the two talents to create a unique, raw energy that makes for one of the best stage shows in New York City.
James first tried on the persona of Silver Spaceman in 2015, eventually joining forces with Bailey and shifting the project toward a more candid approach, shaped by James’ own identity instead of a fictional one.
Dead Tooth have freshly released the video for their track “Blind,” and New Noise was able to catch up with James to chat more about the project, the new video, and the road ahead.
You’re just about to share the new music video and single, “Blind,” off the new Dead Tooth EP, Pig Pile. This is also the second video after “Hollow Skin” from the new album. How are you feeling sharing some of the first new music with listeners?
It feels great. It’s been a long time coming. Quarantine has been this weird stalemate. I didn’t want to put out this record without being able to play it live. It’s very rock ‘n’ roll, and the thought of releasing it when nobody could go to shows felt blasphemous. It’s been so fun to finally be able to bring these songs to life. Most of the EP had never been played live before quarantine.
This is the second Dead Tooth EP; I’m curious how you would say this one compares to the debut?
It’s much heavier and more cathartic. Still Beats was finding the voice of Dead Tooth, and this is that voice belting.
That title, Pig Pile, really caught me. Can you tell me more about the EP name, and does it relate in any way to the subject matter or themes you explore here?
Pig Pile alludes to many things. The Orwellian pigs that represent greed and corruption in politics and the world that’s run by them. Most of this music was written in the Trump era, so there’s a lot of angst in it. There’s a card game called pig pile where you’re constantly throwing down on top of your opponent’s cards. It feels similar to our internet-curated culture where the desire to be heard and seen vastly takes precedence over creating things from the heart and having genuine experiences. Everyone is competing to be that top card. Nobody is more guilty than our former president. It’s all very upsetting. This album felt like a way of expressing that loosely veiled in allegory.
I’m curious what it’s been like collaborating with Andrew Bailey and how things have grown or shifted in your collaboration since the last EP? What does Dead Tooth look like in your eyes now that you both do have that rapport and established a sound together?
Collaborating with Andrew is the shit. He’s become one of my closest friends over the years and we play music in a very complimentary way. I’ll come up with some riff that’s brutally simple and almost dumb and he’ll weave the most beautiful counter melody through it making it so much cooler. He’s got such a vast knowledge of music and is really good at doing catchy stuff that isn’t obvious. The lead work he did on Nightmare America (out 3/11) is a perfect example.
We have a weird way of collaborating seeing as he lives in LA now. Basically whenever he’s in town, we’ll get together, and I’ll show him a bunch of ideas, and we just jam on them and record it. We’ll try not to get too stuck on anything and just keep pumping out ideas, and then he’ll fly back to LA to work on DIIV, and I’ll sift through all the jams we did finding the golden nuggets. Depending on whether or not he has time or I have time one of us will elaborate on that idea in the studio and take it to a final resting place. Sometimes it’s finding some little riff he played for a half second and just repeating that over and over, and then sometimes there’s just a complete take ready to go.”
Can you tell me a bit more about this new single “Blind,” the process behind writing and producing it, what it’s all about?
That one’s been kicking around for a while. The chorus chords specifically were one of those progressions you make up and you’re just like, “Damn this is good,” but then immediately you’re like, “Fuck, how do I make up the rest of the song?” and then it just sits forever. The original demo is from 2015 and I had honestly completely forgotten about it for years until I recently stumbled across it on my old hard drive. I liked it a lot but something about it was missing.
I decided to start from scratch taking the parts I liked, slowing the whole thing down and adding the ominous synth line. I rewrote the lyrics so that it felt like a horror movie. There’s illusions to animals killing their young, hunting/being hunted, heartache and deceit. It’s all very cinematic and obscured by imagery that feels very powerful to me. It’s definitely the most produced song on the record with the acoustic guitar, the heartbeat kick drum and the pretty vocal harmony in the chorus (shoutouts to Mark who laid that down one late night in his apartment).
The new demo sounded so good to me that I had the band actually just track to that recording. I threw a sinister guitar solo at the end and doubled that shit, and voilá, you’ve got “Blind.”
The music video for “Blind” is pretty amazing. Can you talk more about going this direction, with a long one-shot interpretative dance approach?
When starting to conceptualize the video I would put Butoh performances on YouTube, and let the song play over them. It looked really cool so I knew I wanted some kind of interpretive dance. I’ve been a huge fan of the dancer, Nola Sporn Smith‘s for years. I’ve seen her perform at multiple events and am always blown away. Her and her friend Molly do these collaborative choreographed pieces as MOLLY&NOLA that you should check out if you can (mollyandnola.com). There’s a kind of cathartic crossover through our respective art forms so I knew she’d be perfect.
The one shot idea was influenced by our previous single, “Hollow Skin,” as well as a bunch of films. I’ve always been hypnotized by a Spielberg oner. My friend Dalton and I made the “Hollow Skin” video. It was a totally improvised lip-syncing video filmed during a snowstorm. We planned on editing a bunch of takes together but it just felt way more interesting as one shot. Oners are cool cuz you feel like you’re part of a raw performance when you watch it. No splicing or editing.
When the “Hollow Skin” video came out so well, I thought how cool a similar concept could be with an actual dancer. Nola and I got together at her studio and started working on the choreography. We wrote all the lyrics out and tried to come up with movements for specific lines that really expressed those lyrics. We came up with an outline that left room for improvisation and did a couple rough takes with the iPhone, and it immediately looked really cool. Her movements were perfect.
I called up Katie Sadler who shot a Paper Moon Session with us not too long ago. Her footage had the very smooth cinematic look that I really wanted for this. She also films dance projects and being a dancer herself knows how to capture movement in a beautiful way. I think we took four complete takes ’til we got one we liked, and then decided to do another one for good measure. That last one ended up being the final take.
Aside from the EP release, is there anything coming up for Dead Tooth this year? Can we expect any additional music videos or live shows?
Oh yeah! Lot’s to come. There will be another video after Blind for a song called “Riverboat.” A few more live sessions we did as well. We’ve already begun work on a follow up record and we’ve got shows up the wazoo
2/12 OWL w/ Nick Cage, InCircles and Patch Kid Brookyln, NY
3/5 No Fun w/Coupons, Well Wisher and The Greetings Troy, NY
3/9 Berlin w/ Wah Together, Gift, Thus Love and Randy Randall NY, NY
Anything else you’d like to add?
Yeah, did you know bananas make you tired? Just found that out and I’m pissed.
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Watch the video for “Blind” here:
For more from Dead Tooth, find them on Instagram, Facebook, and Spotify.
Photo courtesy of Dead Tooth and Michelle LoBianco
