When the press release for a new record includes text like this: “inspired by Philip Roth’s American Pastoral, he (Abraham Levitan) began writing about suburban dystopia,” we’re in.  Phillip Roth!  Suburban dystopia!  Yes!  Sign us up!  (Note to band’s that we haven’t listened to who want to get on our radar: mention a great American novel(ist) in your press packet and your odds of us being intrigued skyrocket.  Example:  The songwriting of  new band X shows the influence of Saul Bellow.  Done.  We’re going to listen.)  While citing Roth as an influence is setting the bar high, there are stretches where Baby Teeth’s new record, Hustle Beach, lives up to it’s prestigious forebears.  It’s a record that takes a few listens to sink in; the first time you hear the album’s opener, “Big Schools,” it’s tough to discern if it’s tongue in cheek or dead serious.  Taking the “suburban dystopia” thing into account, spinning the album a few more times and soaking in songs like “The Swede” and “Hustle Beach” make it clear that this is both a deeply funny album and an astute criticism of white collar America; Levitan deftly pokes fun at the narrator in “Big Schools,” while making it mildly unclear that he’s doing so.  Add in the insanely catchy pop hooks that are omnipresent on the record and Hustle Beach is a treat; sonically it’s a birthday cake with pink frosting, but the lyrics are little shards of glass wedged under the surface.

Hustle Beach is, to a degree, a product of Levitan’s fascinating songwriting blog, 52 Teeth.  For a year, he’d post a track a week with a descriptive anecdote of some sort.  I was just turned on to the project through this record, so I’m still combing backwards through the entries, but the stuff I’ve read so far is a cool look into the process of a musician.  Levitan mentions a ton of musical influences on his work, which help to frame the record by pointing to what its creator was listening to.  Of the many folks he lists, the one that strikes me as the most revelatory is Randy Newman.  Take a song like “Political Science,” with its biting sarcasm, dark worldview and efforts at meaning-making through gallows humor and you can start to see the stabs that Baby Teeth are making on Hustle Beach. The story of the frat-party attending, economically striving young couple in “Big Schools,” who grow up to have kids who hate them for their bourgeois bullshit is right in line with Newman’s streak of subversive lyricism.  Again, the timbre of the delivery and the deeply poppy background make it tough to discern at first if it’s a goof or not, but throwing Newman’s influence in with Roth’s, it seems that Levitan and company are pointing the mirror firmly back at middle class America, laughing with glee and shaking their heads with shame at the same time.

This lyrical bent continues for much of the record, although it doesn’t seem to be a unified The Wall-ish conceptual vision.  The wealthy suburbanites are the subject of many of the songs, but Baby Teeth take turns away from them frequently.  “Snake Eyes,” one of the album’s most infectious tracks, doesn’t have a lot to do with the folks from “Big Schools,” for instance.  The song itself is top-notch, with klaxon-like guitars punctuating more muscular chords; Levitan’s vocal work on this track, more so than on the rest of the record, shares something with Citizen Dick favorite Robert Pollard, which is weird, given Pollard’s unique stylings.  The middle-class American arc seems to end with the harrowing “The Swede,” which, while describing a white flight scenario, features the lyric that has stuck with me the most: “still it’s a lot to take care of, you got a daughter you might be scared of.”  (This one hits me with all sorts of creepy American Beauty type things.)  Taken as a whole, shifting from the larger “storyline” to other narrative sidebars is a solid trick to keep the album from getting stale.  I’m not sure that I could take forty minutes of the folks from “Big Schools,” but broken up into chunks scattered across the record, it’s far more palatable.

Musically, the album is packed to the gills with a  syrupy pop vibe.  Baby Teeth are not afraid to write hooks.  There’s also a tinge of nostalgia to many of the songs; the keyboard in “Hustle Beach” is dripping with the eighties.  (In a good way.  Side note:  Listen to the track below and see if it reminds you vaguely of “Thriller.”  I’m not sure if I hear “Thriller” when the guitars kick in because that connection is actually there or because my brain is overloaded with Michael Jackson.  If you’ve got an opinion one way or another, drop it in the comments.)  The very next track on the record, “I Hope She Won’t Let Me,” rings of a much earlier pop idiom, with a mildly distorted doo-wop feel.  “Let it Roll” features a much sparer piano sound, some background strings and a soaring chorus that recalls seventies power pop.  It’s easy to focus on the keyboards all over the record and the occasional goofy percussion (the over the top cowbell in “Big Schools,” for instance), but the breadth of sounds Baby Teeth tap is impressive.  There are traces of any number of pop tropes on the record, which, as with the lyrical content, provides solid variety.

Hustle Beach hits stores July 14th.  If the tracks below are compelling for either their lyrical content or their gleefully-treacly sonics, you’re going to want to explore this one further.

“Hustle Beach” – Baby Teeth

“Big Schools” – Baby Teeth

Grab Baby Teeth at insound.