Interview: Baby Teeth
by Dave Tow
Chicago three-piece Baby Teeth are a dramatic island of poppy melodies amidst a sea of dreary shoegaze. Headed by songwriter Abraham Levitan, they fuse the bombastic pomp and arena showmanship with the intimate, lonely-heart balladeer. Their new album and the third for D.C.’s Lujo Records, “The Simp” is a remarkable example of this inherent dualism of Baby Teeth. The bedroom confessional lyrics play off the catchy hooks and supersized vintage pop.
Questions answered by Baby Teeth drummer Peter Andreadis.
How did Baby Teeth begin?
Peter Andreadis: Baby Teeth started about three years ago when I met Abraham at Shape Shoppe recording studio in Chicago. I was living and working there and recorded an EP by his previous band. We hit it off by talking about Top 40 radio singles and which ones we liked or didn’t like. It quickly became obvious that we shared similar tastes for catchy pop tunes. Abraham had a bunch of new songs that weren’t suited for his band and wanted to start recording them. I told him that I wanted to play drums with him, because up until that point, I’d been teaching myself and playing along to rap albums. It wasn’t intended to be a band, but then Abraham met Jim and we all hit it off in a big way.
Eleanor Friedberger (of the Fiery Furnaces) said of Baby Teeth that they’d “never played with a band that sounded so much like Queen.” Do you think the Queen comparison is accurate?
I think it’s accurate in the sense that we make dramatic sounding rock music that has a lot of big choruses and dynamics. There are also a lot of harmony vocals, it’s sort of our trademark. I guess it also makes sense, because Queen mixed in some disco and dance influences with rock. We do a little of that too.
What other influences penetrate Baby Teeth?
Abraham has digested a lot of Motown and Stax recordings from the 60’s and 70’s, so there’s a lot of that in there. He’s a big Van Morrison fan as well. I’d say Hall & Oates, Elvis Costello, and Fleetwood Mac too. Jim comes from Washington D.C. and grew up listening to the post-hardcore music coming out of there, so the heavier edge on his bass playing is a direct influence of that. I fall somewhere in the middle of the two of them, but my favorite things growing up were De La Soul, Public Enemy, and Guns ‘n’ Roses. So who the hell knows really? It’s all over the place.
What theme is at the center of “The Simp”?
“The Simp” is a short version of “simpleton”. A lot of lyrics have to do with evaluating your role in life when changing over from a young 20-something to a functioning contributor in society. Are you really going to live out your dream of becoming a photographer, or a writer or an artist? Or are you going to hunker down at your job and try to get a promotion and make more money. It’s the battle between deciding if you’re going to submit to the idea of being a mundane version of yourself or risk security and strive for something more meaningful. Abraham was struggling with that when he wrote a lot of this album. He felt like being in a band and dreaming was a naive way to live life.
Abraham has been writing as Pearly Sweets for quite some time. What is the story behind the alias and why did he decide to drop it for this album?
Jim and I encouraged him to drop the pen-name, because we thought the songwriting for “The Simp” was stronger than anything he’d done before and we wanted him to take full credit for the material. He’d been tired of the name for a while anyway, so we buried it.
To what extend are musicals and the overall drama of the theater?
There’s a little of that in us. “Prove It On The Stage” has a little “Phantom Of The Opera” dust on it. I used to do musical theater when I was younger, so it’s in the background there. We almost did a photo shoot at a theater for the album art. We had an idea of us standing in the wings of an empty stage with the spotlights shining on nothing. It probably would have looked like a Rush album.
2007 The Simp (Lujo)
2006 For the Heathers (Lujo)
2005 The Baby Teeth Album (Lujo)
