There is an art to building a song, to pulling the listener along with you and keeping things interesting. It’s an art that Ben Noble excels in and Cutting Teeth is a showcase of just how to do it brilliantly. Starting with deft and delicate guitar picking, it adds layers as it travels towards its destination, primal electronica wanders around the periphery, beats and bass joins the fray, it breaks down and builds, plays with drama and dynamics and by the time it reaches its conclusion whole new strange sonic worlds have been built around them.
But what is so great is that for all its musical proclivities, all its wandering off of the beaten track, all of the strange sonic trappings it swathes itself in, underneath is a solid, simple and simply fantastic song. Get the basics right and you can get as imaginative a you like with the surrounding sound. Cutting Teeth, from his album Whiskey Priest, is beguiling, introspective, cinematic and glorious. Bon Iver? Never heard of him!
[…] Most singer-song writers, folkies and acoustic poppers would have been happy enough to have written Cutting Teeth, the song which first brought this slice of Minneapolis gold, or more properly gold leaf, such is […]