Little Teeth

Residing somewhere between noise-pop and freak folk, San Francisco’s Little Teeth originally formed in 2004, after electrical engineer, Yale University alumni/drummer Ammo Eisu (who swam in the same musical waters as Larkin Grimm and Dave Longstreth of The Dirty Projectors while at YU) replied to a Craigslist personal ad posted by vocalist/guitarist Dannie Murrie: “Smart, Young, Hot, Looking for Queer Musician Friend.” Their anti-depressant fueled avant-folk diary-pop practice sessions were cut short a week before they could even play their first show, though; Dannie was diagnosed with tendonitis in both her arms. She was paralyzed for two and a half years. In a desperate attempt to keep music the central focus of her life, Dannie enrolled in a sound engineering class in 2006, where she met Andy Tisdall, a young, straight, male whose constant badgering convinced her to carefully, taking extreme preventative measures, play music again. After Ammo rejoined them, the band spent 14 months experimenting with every instrument they could find (mandolin, banjo, cello, pots, pans, violin, mangled kiddie toys, et al.), overdubbing choruses of vocals, hand recording, mixing, and producing their debut LP, “Child Bearing Man,” in their Daly City, “Pink House,” basement studio. Owing to accolades and sponsorship from Marty Anderson of Okay, “Child Bearing Man” was picked up and set to be released by Absolutely Kosher Records. In July of 2008, though, just two months before their album’s release date, Little Teeth broke up. Dannie Murrie, who had secretly developed deep-seeded feelings for Andy’s girlfriend, Sofia Bell, admitted to being in love with her. Sofia (the cellist of avant-pop band, Squeeky Rice) and Andy lived together in the band’s house/studio alongside Murrie and her girlfriend. In the aftermath of Dannie’s proclamation, Andy quit the band and tried to commit suicide, Sofia who was forced out of the house, slit her wrists and was hospitalized, Dannie who was blamed and ostracized as their house fell apart, sank into depression, the electricity and water were shut off, kitties died of FIV, Ammo desperately tried to continue to book the tour required by their label to support their debut album, that had yet to be released. Little Teeth’s first national tour was a two-month silent-treatment. Though the press their album received was raving, media attention quickly trickled to a stop as news of the band’s breakup overthrew promotional efforts. When the trio returned home, with death threats and hate texts still not behind them, Andy and Ammo abandoned Dannie and started another music project, called Zoo. Upon Dannie’s return to the home Sofia had tried to restore in her absence, Sofia fell ill. The woman Dannie had sacrificed everything for was hospitalized with a gastrointestinal disease that left her bedridden and deteriorating before Dannie’s dark circled eyes. After months of inconclusive medical testing and countless cocktails of painkillers, anti-spasmatics, and prokinetics, Sofia and Dannie were left with little sign of hope. To keep up morale, the girls began singing songs together in bed. When finally a particular combination of chronic painkillers allowed Sofia, though permanently feeble, to leave the bed, the songs they wrote out of sadness and desperation transformed into the first set of a new band they formed together called Kitchen. After a brief West Coast tour, the head of Absolutely Kosher told Dannie that the Little Teeth project either needed to continue with her or be dropped from the label. Dannie asked Sofia to rebuild the band with her from the ground up, continuing with the original ethos of experimentation and unlearning, but fortified by their love; the understanding that comes from two hearts when their bodies stop moving. She also asked for Sofia’s hand in marriage. By 2010, when Sofia and Dannie Murrie-Bell set to record the second Little Teeth LP, concurrently a sophomore and debut album, they, alongside enthusiastic Kitchen fan, Sean Real, had undergone two additional national US and one European tour in support of “Child Bearing Man.” This album, a handbook for musical exploration within the struggle for self, was the rudimentary foundation upon which the new Little Teeth was able to flourish. The songs Sofia and Dannie wrote, orchestrated, and toured together, the nine songs they are currently recording, tell the story of their tumultuous love, their band’s death, rebirth, and its ghosts; when a human is pushed over the precipice, the sound of that fall, the music of slowly rising. Together with Sean and now Brian Rodriguez, Sofia and Dannie continue to push Little Teeth’s experimental boarders into ever and more so surprisingly beautiful landscapes; commanding, conflicted, and utterly moving. "Desperate energies with moments of profound beauty, clarity and focus."