We’ve all been waiting for someone to pick apart Titanic’s leading man in song, yes? Dead Tooth’s Zach Ellis is more than up to the task.
“I made the demo after I’d just watched the movie,” says Ellis. “I was alone with my thoughts and a bottle of mezcal. I thought of the Jack Dawson character through a David Lynch-ian lens. This darker, deeper Jack wasn’t so aloof and happy-go-lucky—tortured by an insatiable lust for life that arguably led to his own demise. Whatever happened to him in Chippewa Falls gave way to a voracious compulsion to keep moving. He’s one of those cowboys Willie Nelson sings about. The dude’s out there bumming around Paris, drawing one-legged prostitutes in French brothels. What a badass.”
The brazen absurdity of “Jack Dawson” is nothing for new for Ellis, whose Queens, N.Y., quintet is set to release its self-titled debut on July 18 via Trash Casual. Dead Tooth has essentially fashioned its own subgenre: “rodeo core,” a sound that borrows from post-punk, goth, hardcore and (in an oddly peripheral sense) county music. Live, the band’s raw theatricality has earned Dead Tooth opening slots for everyone from GWAR to Bass Drum Of Death. Recording Dead Tooth’s 11 tracks in multiple studios around New York over three years, Ellis was joined by Taylor Mitchell (guitar), James Duncan (bass), Michael Cohen (drums) and John Stanesco (EWI, saxophone). Light on effects and overdubs, the album was mixed by Tom Beaujour (Nada Surf, Aeon Station).
A bit of an anomaly, “Jack Dawson” is a direct product of the tequila-soaked demo session Ellis spoke about. “The stabs in the beginning are actually a digital steel drum with a bunch of distortion, layered with sax and guitar—I just had a bunch of fun with it,” says Ellis. “I had John over to my practice space to record the sax solo and chopped and screwed a bunch of it. It’s become one of my favorite tracks on the record.”
We’re proud to premiere Dead Tooth’s “Jack Dawson.”
—Hobart Rowland
See Dead Tooth live.
