When was the last time you contemplated the emotional gravity of a pizza box? Dead Tooth’s latest single, “Birthday Boohoo”, doesn’t ask you to stare at the cardboard container, but it certainly invites you to contemplate life’s absurdities—its folded corners, its grease-stains of existential dread. Queens-based Dead Tooth has cooked up a post-punk fever dream with this one, turning what could have been a throwaway slice of alienation into something unsettlingly digestible. This isn’t just another birthday party track. This is a glitch in whatever simulation you’re currently running.
Zach Ellis howls like he’s stuck in a photo booth—those sticky flashes of intimacy and distorted laughter gone wrong. And then there’s the saxophone. John Stanesco manages to somehow make five quick notes of wind sound like the dying gasp of New York City itself. What’s that? A sax in post-punk? Yeah, it’s possible, and it doesn’t just fit—it leaks into the cracks of your brain, uninvited, yet essential. You’re thrust in and out of sync with the landscape, while Taylor Mitchell’s disjointed, jagged guitar matches the fractured storyline, each note echoing the dislocation that “Birthday Boohoo” revels in.
This track hammers at you like a bad birthday party that you never wanted to attend, drenched in odd, intimate reflections. James Duncan’s bass grooves feel like footsteps in a dream—you can hear them, but they’re too far from you, impossible to follow. Ginno Tacsiat on drums practically stutters his way through, leaving just enough stability for the chaos to float atop. It’s an uncomfortable kind of beautiful.
Themes of isolation and disconnection? Sure, but this feels less like a song about feeling out of place and more like an attempt to rewrite the rules of any room Ellis walks into. And sometimes, those rooms are covered in pizza boxes.
“Birthday Boohoo” isn’t the anthem of your 20s. It’s the messy, emotional hangover of realizing that some things just don’t fit—yet, somehow, they’re the most unforgettable.
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