March 2nd, 2013. CoolMom and I were going to Brighton Bar in Long Branch to see Bow Wow Wow. It was one of those shows with a half-dozen opening acts on the bill, and I remember being particularly excited to see a band called Dentist. I even wrote here about how excited I was to see that band in particular. I think I'd discovered some of their early singles through my friends at Speak Into My Good Eye, and something about the mix of surf and pop and punk appealed to me right away. I still have those early singles -- "Robot," "Bird in the Cage," what was then "Hanging 10," "No Matter," and "Batman" -- gathered together in a little Unknown Album under Dentist in iTunes.
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| Dentist at Brighton Bar. March, 2013. |
We saw them that night at Brighton Bar, and I remember really loving their set. Later, they were hanging at the bar. We never spoke.
I think I finally met Emily and Justin Bornemann about three weeks later at a Speak Into My Good Eye-hosted record release show for Paper Streets at The Saint. SIMGE's Chris Rotolo introduced me as CoolDad, and Emily said something like, "Wow. There are so many celebrities here," which cracked me up. She gave me a pin -- the blue Dentist pin with the dinosaur on it -- that I still have pinned to the strap on one of my camera bags.
In a way, I feel like Dentist and CoolDad Music have kind of grown up together over the last several years. I'd been at it here for two days short of one year when I first saw them that night in March 2013, and I don't think Dentist had been a band even for that long back then. Since then, I've been to countless Dentist shows. I drove them and all of their gear to a show in Brooklyn once. We made several music videos together. We've had several drinks, celebrated each others' birthdays, gone to shows. We shared a booth at a Waffle House in Texas. I've written about them and photographed their live sets to the point that I was almost starting to feel self-conscious about it as a blogger.
Then, the other night, I was driving to a show at The Saint and going through one of my periodic... not crises really... let's say moments of confusion over what I want CoolDad Music to be. Is it an outlet for all kinds of music news related to New Jersey, New York, etc? Or is it still my own vanity project, my own collection of musings on the stuff that I love? And I realized in the car that night that I'd done a great injustice to what I really want CoolDad Music to be by never actually writing an official review of something that I love as much as Dentist's Ceilings.
You can see what my thinking was, though, right? These are people with whom I've grown close. In the run up to its release, I wrote a great deal about the record. I wrote about the release show. I made videos -- official and at performances -- for, I think, five of the songs that would eventually end up on Ceilings. What value would a review from me even have?
Well, I'll tell you what. I went to that show in March of 2013 on the strength of a bunch of singles made by people I'd never met. I heard the songs and paid money to download them so I'd be able to listen to them in my car. I eventually met the members of Dentist by virtue of going to so many of their shows because I loved the music they were making. If it's true that we grew up together, then Ceilings represents the grown-up version of that band I started following years ago. It's one of my favorite records of the year, and it would be whether I knew these people or not.
"Climbed Too Many Trees" opens the record; and, right away, the difference from Dentist's self-titled debut is clear. Emily Bornemann's wispy vocals are clear above the aggressive guitar and no longer buried low in the mix. The band have said that Ceilings was written as an album and not just a collection of singles, and "Climbed Too Many Trees" is one of the songs that fits in with the recurring themes of taking (or losing) control of your life, finding (or losing) confidence, finding yourself.
I first heard "Awful" at Shea Stadium, coincidentally, just about exactly two years ago on August 8th, 2014. What impressed me then is still present in the song: the surfy guitars, the juxtaposition of Emily's far-off vocal with the immediacy of the music. Again, the production (handled by Dentist and Andy Bova) brings Emily's vocals to the fore; we can hear her singing about the feeling of losing control to your emotions.
"Meet You There (In Delaware)" is one of the only songs on Ceilings that I don't believe I ever heard before hearing the album. It immediately jumped out at me as a single, Emily's bouncing riff and the bendy leads from Justin Bornemann make the song, about the emptiness that can come from trying to fill every evening with something fun, one that sticks in your mind like so many great pop songs.
Live show-stopper "Over and Over" is full of slow builds punctuated by Andy Bova's drum crashes. It kind of puts on the brakes after the trio of openers, but its tension and drama keep the pressure on. The speed picks up again with "Body Slam Move," an early rocker I first heard on Thanksgiving Eve 2014 at Red Bank Rehearsal Studios.
"Joel" opens with some slow, reverb-drenched, retro-sounding guitar before kicking things into a frantic high gear about a minute in. "You're a Bore" always stood out to me during live sets. Maybe it's the prominence of Nick Kaelblein's bass, which lends a post-punky feel to the song, that drew me. "You Say" is a great example of what Dentist do so well as it blends angular, aggressive guitar with Emily's almost dream pop vocals into a sound that's uniquely Dentist.
The final two tracks on Ceilings take the album out on a high. The cinematic melodrama and building tension of "Over and Over" is back on "Air Vent." The album closes with the misdirection of "Digging up the Dog." On Dentist's self-titled debut, the final song is the acoustic "Dinosaur;" and Justin Bornemann once told me that he liked the convention of closing a record with an acoustic number. "Digging up the Dog" starts with just Emily (less reverby this time) and acoustic guitar before transitioning to raucous, surf-inspired rock.
So there you have it. Dentist and CoolDad Music have come a long way since I first took blurry pictures of them at that Brighton Bar show three and a half years ago. Dentist have added drummer Rudy Meier and signed to Little Dickman Records. I've started taking a lot more pictures and writing a lot fewer loooooooong pieces about the stuff I love.
CoolDad Music wouldn't be what it is today without Dentist. They've helped me hone my photography skills. They've let me make videos for them, and they continue to make music that inspires me. You can see all that and say, "Yeah. So of course he's gonna say he loves their record." That's probably true; but, if you trust me at all, you should give it a listen. I think you may like it, too.
Ceilings is out now on Little Dickman Records. You can see Dentist this Friday, August 12th, when they play Sugarfest at The Citizen in Jersey City, a benefit show for listener-supported WFDU.
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