Play of the day – Back Teeth are the Ultimate Worriers

Ultimate Worrier
Back Teeth
Little Rocket Records

Back Teeth are a gruff punk-core dad-rock band stitched together from festival friendships and late-night singalongs. They are loud, raw, and unashamedly honest. Their songs blend wry observation with big-hearted choruses built for shouting along in sweaty rooms. This is their debut album and it wears its scars with pride, balancing cynicism with hope in equal measure.

Back teeth just strike me as a group of mates. Four friends getting together talking about their lives. While they are doing so they are looking into each others souls and trying to find their way through the journey. Being together and singing songs. These songs make up Ultimate Worrier.

While you’re listening to the melodies and soaring vocals you are taken to a place that involves bodies heaving on the dance floor, everyone picking each other up, fists in the air at defiance of where our worlds are heading and taking us to where we really want to be.

I sent the band some questions and Lewis got back in double quick time

1. Can the reader have some band history?

We met at Punk Rock Holiday in Slovenia when a mutual friend introduced Paul & I to Tom & Dave and we had a drunken conversation about starting a band when we got back. I showed them a few songs I’d written over lockdown after not being in a band for a few years and once gigs and festivals started kicking off I’d got the taste for it again.

We had a couple of practices and it felt great straight away. We started playing gigs as soon as we had a bunch of songs sorted, we’re not getting any younger, so why wait? We’ve all been in bands for around 20 years, so it’s not like it was some college band we threw together. We kind of knew what we wanted to achieve, play gigs with bands we love and put out records. Unfortunately Dave (our original bass player) isn’t with us any more but Rich, a friend of mine, joined us in February.

2. How did the fest gig come about? What’s it like travelling to the States to play? What were the highlights for you? 

Fest is brilliant. Me and Rich have been going for over a decade. I’ve played it once before with a previous band about 10 years ago and he’s played it multiple times with Question The Mark. Everyone kind of knows each other, it’s like a big family.

We wrote “Weekend At Looseys” specifically so we could send it to Tony and try to get on Fest. There’s no point pretending otherwise. We just kept emailing over and over until he gave in. Travelling over there is exciting but a bit of a pain, you can showcase on an ESTA visa but taking instruments over is a hassle, so we had to buy new guitars/drums when we got there.

We played Foreign Dissent in Orlando with loads of the other international bands, Modern Shakes, Harker, Bear Away, Toodles And The Hectic Pity, Sunliner from the UK and Lext, Germinar, Small State, Swear & Descartes a Kant from elsewhere. Packed venue, queue around the corner at one point Craig Mazer did an amazing job.

Then we went to Tampa for another brilliant gig put together by Chewy with some of our favourite bands: Tiltwheel, Too Many Daves, The Miller Lowlifes, Tides, Amusement, Fever Sleep & Spares. It felt like we had a whole week of Fest before we even got to Gainesville.

Pre-Fest Thursday, Fest Friday, Saturday… then we played on Sunday, and there was a line outside Looseys around the corner trying to get in. We genuinely weren’t expecting that sort of reception. People coming up afterwards wanting to talk, we sold out of all our records, and some lovely things were written about us online.

3. You keep yourself busy on Instagram – is that a conscious thing? Is it something that you want to do or feel you have to?

In my day job I’m a photographer and filmmaker, so I’m used to having an online presence. We repost stories and make our own daft little videos here and there. We try not to overdo it so it doesn’t become a chore. The engagement with people is the nice bit, we’re sociable, and we’re grateful when someone takes the time to post about us.

4. Do you try and convey a feeling through your songs?
Yes. For me it’s about passion, the feeling where you’re giving absolutely everything. I hope that comes across on record and especially live. We’re a knackered after the first song kind of band.

5. They aren’t overtly politically lyrics but somehow you capture a sense of togetherness, does punk rock and community mean anything to you?

For us, punk is about community, inclusivity and looking out for each other. I try to strike a balance in the lyrics: political without being preachy & emotive without being overly emotional. I love a bit of wordplay and references to bands and songs I love and try to weave that in where I can.

“Guillotine” is probably the most political, very obviously about the political classes and “Means Of Reduction” is about corporate greed and exploitation of the working class. Most of the others are about being tired, getting older and not getting enough sleep… stuff everyone is going through.

6. Why would someone “Reach for the stars that surround your heart”?
Time For The Forever Box started as a lyrical experiment at about 4am on a sleepless night. My last band Trivial Dispute leaned heavily into the whole misery punk vibe, and I wanted to totally get away from that. I wanted to write songs about hope, but still with a bit of cynicism in there.

That line came from a stream of consciousness thing, but it felt like a line about keeping your friends close. All our friends are the stars in our lives and we need to keep them around us.

7. There’s a mention of Dad-Rock in your bio on bandcamp.  Is that because you are Dads rocking out or you want us Dads to rock out? If you are parents does that bring a different perspective to playing music or what you might want from being in a band? 

We range from late 30s to early 50s, so we’re not the youngest kids on the block but we’re not all dads either. “Divorced dad rock” is basically the bands we listened to in the 90s/2000s. We write songs the old way: guitar riffs, singalong choruses, nothing fancy, no production tricks.

We just want to sit nicely in your record collection between Hot Water Music & Samiam. I don’t think that’s too much to ask…

niallhope