Ice, Sea Dead People – Teeth Union

Any album that opens with a song titled ‘I’m Cat’ is probably gonna find a home in my heart.

In reality, I have no idea if the song topic is even feline. I have no idea what’s going on. I have no idea when the crushing guitars will relent, the distortion will dispel, or how far we can actually go before everything caves in under the sheer weight of ideas possessed in this screeched symphony.

I’ve actually had Teeth Union, the debut album from Ice, Sea, Dead People for a while. When I saw it fading off the review list here, well, I had to claim it for no other reason than to tell you how good it is. This is the kind of record that just really makes me want to see the band live. There’s enough energy in these pre-packaged twenty-five minutes to power a small country for a year. It makes me want to throw myself across rooms and jump and jerk along with the angular, disjointed noise pouring through my speakers.

On ‘My Twin Brother’s A Brother’ the band start and spurt like Dananananaykroyd chanting over a Fugazi bass line. I love how there’s absolutely no stasis, but still a chorus seems to be built through the chugging jolts of drum fill and darting hooks. Ice, Sea, Dead People are clearly not fans of the predictable or safe. There’s this playfulness to their music that rejoices in waiting just until you’ve fallen into their groove, and then stopping you dead. They have the urgency of early Liars but without the necessity. Their song structures sound like Polvo, but with the fuzzed out hunger of young British troublemakers.

Previous single ‘Hence Elvis’ somehow constructs a chorus from clarity, and that’s what this record is about. Using the calmer moments to try and make sense of what just happened, and where this is going, and then being completely taken by surprise.