SINGLE REVIEW | PUPPY TEETH – MELATONIN by Bryden Churchmichael
Puppy Teeth: Edinburgh five-piece, debut EP Teething dropping this summer, first up, ‘Melatonin’ – out now.
That alarm-like guitar at the start is what got me. Grungy, repetitive, almost blaring – the kind of sound that makes you sit up instead of drift off. I was in bed, late at night, unable to sleep, listening to a track called ‘Melatonin’.
Then it drops into bedroom-pop flow with vocals sitting somewhere between through-walls and just-loud-enough-to-catch. Around 2:10 it shifts. “I just wanna sleep” breaks apart into “I just wanna I just wanna I just wanna” — stuck, repeating, echoing over itself. Then it cuts out completely. Silence. A delayed “how” comes back with this breath underneath it, and the whole thing slams back into the upbeat pop section like nothing happened.
Kind of like waking up after briefly nodding off with your thoughts still spiralling in your head. Your body tries to drop but your brain’s still cycling the same loop. That cut-out is the brief nothing, then the gasp when you jerk back awake and you’re exactly where you left off. Song structure doing the actual sensation instead of just describing it.
The lyrics sit covered but that’s the point: “How do you numb your thoughts, how do you make them stop there eating my mind they can not ever get enough.” That’s not insomnia, that’s spiralling. Thoughts you can’t control, can’t turn off, can’t satisfy.
The vocals are buried enough that I can’t make out most of the words. Might be intentional, shoegaze tradition and all that. Means I’m engaging with how it moves rather than what it’s saying. They cite NewDad and Sorry for vocal production, Mary In The Junkyard for mixing reference, but the combination lands somewhere distinct.
Anna Trost wrote this at 3am during insomnia, but these lines are bigger than that. This is the fighting-to-stay-awake when you know you’re done — when sleep won’t come because your own head won’t let you rest.
German/Scottish band, Puppy Teeth are Trost on vocals and rhythm guitar, Theo Black on lead guitar, Ed Meltzer on bass, Niamh Jordan on drums, Ewen Kerr on rhythm guitar and synth. Think Fontaines D.C. meets Clairo but in Edinburgh. Grungy guitars with vocals that sits in that soft pop space.
Recorded at Pocketsounds in Granton, the studio formerly known as Chamber where Biffy Clyro and Mogwai tracked albums. Meltzer runs the space and produces the band’s work. Mastered by Pete Maher– The 1975, Lana Del Rey, The Rolling Stones. Proper production credentials without leaving town, and you can hear it.
They’re calling it bubblegrunge. ‘Melatonin’ keeps its restlessness structured with a title that tells you to sleep but the song won’t let you.
They’ve made a video for this – shot in and around their house, sleep paralysis monsters, Alice in Wonderland but nightmare. Anna Trost crafted the masks herself. The DIY horror aesthetic fits. A song about insomnia that keeps you awake, accompanied by the kind of creatures you see when you’re stuck between sleep and waking. They’ve thought this through.
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