10 years on from their debut – and 4 from the lineup shuffle that produced 2010′s underwhelming Heaven Is Whenever – Brooklyn’s blue-collar rock heroes sound like a band recharged. There’s an immediacy here that’s disorienting – all pummelling drums, gritty, sailing riffs and Craig Finn’s bartender poetry set to spitfire. But after the knockout comes the pay-off. This is a big rock album that feels richer, more expansive, with every listen.
Teeth Dreams, tradition has it, denote anxiety. It’s this restless energy that fuels Finn’s sing-speak stories of big cities and “American sadness” – tangled lives, flawed romances and agitated bodies searching their way across US states like so many pins on a map: California, Michigan, Texas, Tennessee. A darkness edges in on the blurry, drugged-out nine-minute Oaks, but mostly, Teeth Dreams feels alive and potent with a bruisy sort of hope. “Once you’re out there, everything’s possible,” Finn promises on Spinners. “Might be a fight, but it might be a miracle.”
