Necking: Cut Your Teeth

Sometimes a piece of music is derivative to the point where the soul is completely sucked out of it. Other times, referential music can reignite the spirit of its forebears while cultivating something all of its own. Lucky for Vancouver quartet Necking, their debut album Cut Your Teeth falls into the latter camp. There’s too much nuanced humanity in this record to write them off as just another punk band.
Their minimal, shouty post-punk and grunge-tinted rock songs would fall flat if they weren’t performed with discernible gusto or infused with as much simmering rage or relatable sulk. Perhaps one of the reasons their emotions are so believable is that three of the four band members went through breakups while writing the album. That said, the four women that make up Necking—singer Hannah Karren, guitarist Nada Hayek, bassist Sonya R and drummer Melissa Kuipers—aren’t just howling about the usual suspects. They do so when necessary, but first and foremost, they embark on a quest to become functioning people or whatever they think qualifies as such. Leaving those who have wronged you in the dust is one thing, but cruising to self-improvement on your own is an entirely separate and equally important path.
Cut Your Teeth is a clash of the powerful and the powerless. On the cutting album opener “Big Mouth,” a man tries to exert power over a relationship by boasting flattering sexual untruths to his friends. “Boss” describes a corporate power dynamic between the narrator and a boss ten years her senior, and an important question is posed: Can we really function as a society when the rich movers and shakers hold the fate of the masses in their hands like a tiny bird? “No Playtime” comes for the throats of gentrifiers, which suck the life out of independent art and music scenes.