Toothfairy, Formative

reviewed by dave heaton

Formative is a fitting title for Toothfairy's first album, because the music sounds like it's being worked out as you listen, like Toothfairy is playfully forming their sound as they go along. The music has a loose and informal air about it that ends up making it all the more exciting. Toothfairy is Chad Crouch of Blanket Music, singing, often in a rolling narrative style, over spunky and melodic laptop beats. The overall tone of the album is softly exploratory, a heartfelt creative journey with a pretty sheen. Opening track "Kicked Outta the Band" ends up with what sounds like a proclamation of the purpose behind Toothfairy: "I'm gonna make my own music and dance a lot / gonna rock this laptop thing…and sing what comes natural to me".

Halfway through the album, the fiery, dancefloor-filling "Let's Go" echoes these statements, phrasing the purpose in a more forceful way, promising to break all the rules and switch up the roles, without hesitating or worrying about the consequences: "gonna play with fire uh huh let's go…"

It's fitting too that for the song lyrics, Crouch mostly chose as subject matter the growing pains of adolescence, particularly those complicated junior-high and high school years. Besides the obvious parallels between creating your own new musical personality and teenage self-discovery, there's also something youthful, wistful, nostalgic, and forward-looking about the electronic beats themselves. Like those used by the Audio Dregs musicians, Yacht, the Postal Service and the Go! Team even, Toothfairy's electronic textures resonate in an almost unconscious way for those of us raised in the '70s and '80s. Is it from the sounds of Atari games and Saturday morning cartoon themes? Is it from new-wave? The remnants of disco? It's hard to analyze but easy to feel, this connection between airy, catchy electronics and the emotional trajectory of life.

Formative doesn't feel backward-looking in any way, though. Even as it uses the past for source material, overall as a project it's all about the present and future, about forging a new sound by just doing what you feel like in the now. The album doesn't feel fussed over (maybe it was, but it doesn't seem it), it feels more like spontaneous creative explosion. It's exciting electronic music, but also intimate and human, taking a fun and humorous look at life.

{www.hushrecords.com}