Playing punk with a groove and soul with an edge, Santa Barbara’s Easter Teeth likes to rebel with rhythm. Composed chiefly of brothers Tim and Joshua Eymann, the band blends hardcore compositions with Motown motifs, with lyrical wit and wisdom to boot. They are anticipating a soon-to-be released 7” split with Moral Monsters on Veritas Vinyl. I talked with keyboardist-bassister-singer Tim about their sound, their new video, “Watch Me Get My Worship On,” the craziest show they’ve played, and why the band is scaling back on Santa Barbara shows.
How would you guys describe your sound and how you came to create it? Who are your influences? Our favorite terms we've heard are soul punk or soul core. Really we're just some variation of post-punk or noise rock. We sort of grit our teeth whenever someone throws out "funk rock." That sounds dangerously close to the Chili Peppers or like The Spindoctors or something. We came up with our sound just out of our love of soul music. And we thought it might be something that could sound cool without a guitar player. We figured out how to sprinkle in the dirty Casio tones to offset the low end, and badda bing! Also, we always dreamed of getting to have horns, and thought this sound would lend itself nicely to that. We were fortunate enough to have a horn section for a while, but it was tricky keeping them all committed. Maybe we'll have horns again down the road, but for now it's just me and Josh. Influences? We've tried to model the sound somewhere between post punk and noise rock bands like Gang of Four, Shellac, and Young Widows, all with the kind of break beats James Brown perfected. Oh and Death From Above 1979 – should be obvious that they're an influence.
Where do you guys fit amongst local punk and punk-influenced bands? How do you stand out? Does S.B. welcome or reject punk/hardcore music? We've never really felt like we fit in. But admittedly, we do it to ourselves to a degree. We've picked a sound that isn't hardcore enough for hardcore kids or hip enough for hipsters. So we end up on a lot of eclectic bills. There have been a few bands we've connected with locally though like Blasting Concept, Mouth (who's up in Oakland now), Fell to Low, Petmez, a few others. We're excited about these young guys The Avocado Commissioners who are joining us next week. It's great to see young people starting good, weird bands. But we do feel like we're better received out of town, honestly. This year we purposefully limited ourselves to only six local shows, I think, and we played more in the L.A. area, inland, O.C., the Bay... As for S.B., it's got a pretty small punk/hardcore scene compared even to Ventura. I think some good bands come out of our town, but there's not a huge demand for the more aggressive stuff here. So bands end up playing in front of other bands a lot. It's not outright rejected, but there's not a whole lot of hunger for it here.