UNEMPLOYMENT FOREVER

Another Band from Portland.....

(part of this originally posted on the Vice website)

Meth Teeth are;

Mattey-guitar,vocals.

Kyle-drums,vocals.

Fischmann-Guitar

How did Meth Teeth come together?

Meth Teeth came about when I quit one really frustrating band.Then another band I had worked really hard on fell apart. I was sick of bands and especially band mates. I become really interested in folk music and just wanted to write songs on my own and play them just for my friends. Exactly two years ago today I had my first show in a friends basement and invited some people to come play with me. That line up included a violin and a piano and was all acoustic. Then Kyle from Leper Print (our drummer) moved to Portland to go to art school on a Sub Pop Records scholarship. He had my really early demos and suggested that just me and him re-record the songs really blown out like an old Pussy Galore record or something. The folk vibe mixed with the lo-fi of our favorite noise and punk records seemed to work really well for the songs. We practiced once and then recorded the songs the next day on a cassette 8 track run through a karaoke machine. There was a layer of tape hiss on it so loud over it that when we would show it to people and they would listen and just look kinda confused. We really dug it though. That recording would later become our first 7''.

There's quite a few great bands coming out of portland at the moment, Eat Skull, The Whines, Rapid Youth were you inspired by them / are they friends of yours?

Portland's always been rich with amazing and original music. The Wipers, Dead Moon, Poison Idea etc. Bobby from the Whines and Rob from Eat Skulls house isn't too far from me. I wake up on their couch every once and a while and we've all played lots of shows together in town. I hadn't heard either of their bands when I started this project so I wasn't really inspired by them specifically but Rob and Rod (sp?) from Eat skull were in a band called The Hospitals earlier that I was listening to a lot when me and Kyle got started on stuff.

Rapid Youth is actually from Southern California though they have links to Portland. Those kids are funny as hell. One time I watched the vegan kid eat a pepperoni pizza that we pulled out of a dumpster when he was drunk. So awesome.

The tambourine's refreshingly loud on your recordings, similar to some sixties bands, notably the Beatles! Was this a conscious decision?

All we have is a set of really old, beat to shit drums that may or may not have been stolen by the dude i bought um off. We don't know anything about tuning them and have no money for new heads so we strapped a tambourine to the snare drum with a necktie to make it more audible.

All-time Top Five records?

Beck - One foot in the Grave
I bought this record when I was 12 and I still love it. Really laid back, weird-o folk stuff. Don't really care for any of his other records so much. This one is amazing though.



Bob Dylan - Another Side of Bob Dylan
I had to sell all my records once to pay rent and they wouldn't buy this one off of me. It was all I had left so I listened to it over and over on repeat. I heard he didn't want this record to be released but was bound by contract or something. Also, I heard he was sick of playing the role protest tune songwriter at the time so there are no 'the times are a changin" crap. For some reason this record of his really got me.



The Jesus and Mary Chain - Psychocandy
Very sweet, wall of sound-ish and almost 60's girl group songwriting mixed with brutal feedback. Pretty much perfect.



Pussy Galore- last show LP released as Live:In the red.
Part noise, part garage rock. Led by Jon Spencer of Blues Explosion. A cool twist on the 80's,NY scene- No Wave ideas they were surrounded by in their day. Drummer plays a trash can instead of a snare drum!



Neil Young - After The Goldrush
...He writes writes the best bummer songs ever. Listening to it right now



Any plans for a UK tour or record being released over here?

Fly us over and we will play! haha. No UK releases planned at the moment. Oh wait, there is a re-release of our 4 song tour tape that we put out last summer. But this time it's being released as a spilt with two other bands. They are Male Bonding and Mazes and that coming out on Split Tapes London any day now.

Who or what inspired you to start making music?

Portland's annual eight months of darkness and rain take their toll. Boredom and insanity as a result of that have a lot to do with this towns music. Kind of a generic "Portland" answer to your question but move here and you'll see it's no joke.

When's the LP out
Late June/early July. Stoked!

Meth Teeth - Never Been To Church

This mp3 is called "Never Been to Church". It's off our debut LP which is coming out on Woodsist in late June/early July.It's not even mastered yet haha.




Thanks Mattey!