When I was in high school and in a band—if you can call it that—we tried to create a certain type of sound. We tried to make music that mirrored our interests in modern indie and pop while also honoring the sounds of classic rock that we loved dearly. Lyrically, we wanted to make songs about being stuck, about the oppressive confines of adolescence, and the glimpses of freedom one gets while driving down the highway with a newly minted driver’s license. We were enthusiastic and insufferable.
But when you’re young you have many things going against you, the most significant of which is that your taste in music, or in any art really, far exceeds the amount of talent you may have. We had an idea of what the music we wanted to make was, but the end product never came close to hitting the mark.
“Teeth,” the latest track from Langkamer, is as good an example as ever of what my “band” tried to accomplish. The song vibrates among various genres and styles; there’s a lo fi quality to the drums and vocals, giving the track a garage band feel—something homegrown and local—while slide guitar commands the beginning of the song and continues to color the track with an alt country shade. From Bristol in the UK, Langkamer is described as “country rockers,” but “Teeth” is undoubtedly an amalgam of various genres.
The song is driven by an infectious groove, courtesy of solid bass and propelled by drums that relentlessly push the song forward. And not unlike the circular, repetitive nature of the guitar, the lyrical content is best understood by the most repeated sentiment in the song—the refrain in each chorus:
I wanna be where you are
I wanna go where you go
Despite the upbeat melody, incredibly earworm-y chorus, and a driving tempo, “Teeth” is a song about longing. The narrator is observing from the outside, never in contact with the person of his admiration. You’ll notice the narrator repeatedly sings in each verse “I saw…,” rather than experiencing a direct engagement with the person he’s referencing. Furthermore, a sense of palace is never settled on in this song. There’s constant movement, or a constant desire to be somewhere that we are not.
But “Teeth” is, for a lack of a better word, fun. It’s indie and pop, fast and rhythmic, and the influence of older British alternative rock bands rings throughout the song. At first listen the track may seem one-dimensional, as you’ll find little variation in the phrasing and structure of the lyrics, and few, if any, interesting curveballs throughout the instrumentation. But this is often what I want in a song; I want something that feels comfortable and easy. I want something that would make my younger self’s eyes light up, believing for a moment that maybe, just maybe, my band could write a great song.
