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Showing their Teeth
A night of karaoke reveals the kooky wisdom behind Baby Teeth.
“This one goes out to my favorite band: Baby Teeth,” Jim Cooper wryly announces before crooning through a silky rendition of ’60s standard “Blue Velvet.” More than just a fan, Cooper’s the bassist-singer of the Chicago trio, but the 33-year-old’s humor is lost on the audience of 15 or so who’ve gathered at Louie’s Pub for weekday karaoke.
The dimly lit Wicker Park watering hole screens a Cubs game behind the bar as Baby Teeth’s fearless frontman, Abraham Levitan, explains to us, “Karaoke’s a good chance to try out some new characters.” Soon he’s holding the mike, eyes fixed on the monitors. “This is my first time doing karaoke. Normally I do religious material,” he bluffs before launching into Ugly Kid Joe’s “Everything About You.” It’s an ironic choice of a terrible song, but the keyboardist-singer takes it even further, singing entirely in falsetto, save a few grungy, Creed-inspired growls. During the guitar solo, the lanky 31-year-old rips through a few windmills to roaring applause.
“You want there to be the risk that you’re gonna get punched in the face,” he says afterward, then joins Cooper for a duet of “All I Ask of You” from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Phantom of the Opera.” Levitan and Cooper assume the roles of Christine Daaé and the Phantom, respectively, and soon they’re hamming it up, each covering half his face with a hand in a shout-out to the titular ogre—with Levitan inexplicably, but hilariously, playing the heroine equally deformed.
Teeth drummer Peter Andreadis, 32, breaks up the shenanigans with a spot-on rendition of Paul McCartney’s groovy “Coming Up,” which comes closest to the group’s own music. The peppy, humor-laden trio substitutes guitars with keyboards and strong vocal harmonies, explicitly indebted to the 1980s yet decidedly more yacht rock than Cocteau Twins.
Far more so than its retrofitted peers who are selling out concert halls, Baby Teeth has a distinct band-out-of-time feel that reflects its cheeky sense of humor. “If there’s one thing I really like about punk rock or even the Smiths, it’s the idea of putting a band together that’s gonna make people really mad,” Levitan says. “To do that with a lot of soft-rock influences is maybe the most perverse thing you could do.” He adds with utter sincerity, “I like most of the music I hear at the supermarket. I think they do a really nice job of playing soft-rock instrumentals.”
Those Muzak influences aren’t hard to pick out on the new Hustle Beach, from the Elvis Costello soul of “The Part You Play” to the uptempo Joe Jackson shuffle of “I Tried to Figure You Out.” In addition to Costello, Levitan cites Harry Nilsson and Randy Newman as songwriters whose humor and music aren’t mutually exclusive. If the band’s latest is a more refined effort than its two earlier albums, that’s largely because the 11 tunes were culled from Levitan’s blog 52 Teeth, in which he posted a new song each week for a year. What would be a daunting exercise for most songwriters was a boon for Levitan: “I like when there’s a huge surplus and you can cherry-pick ones that really connect.”
While Baby Teeth’s karaoke antics win over the modest mob at Louie’s, the guys often sidestep crowd-pleasing conventions with their own tunes. “There’s something to be said for doing things that are a little uncomfortable for the audience,” Andreadis notes. We’re interrupted by a couple howling Robert Plant’s intro to Led Zeppelin’s “Black Dog.” Cooper loudly counters, “I can’t hear a word you’re saying, and I think that really sums up the Chicago music scene in a sentence.”
Baby Teeth plays Schubas Saturday 1. Levitan visited our office for a live performance. Hear it on the Infinite Loop podcast at the TOC blog.
