The band’s devotees often bond over a shared bewilderment that Biters – guitarist/songwriter Tuk Smith, lead guitarist Matt Gabs, powerhouse drummer Joey O’Brien and a procession of bassists – didn’t reap the global showcases bestowed upon The Struts. Detractors tended to dismiss the band as nothing-new-here 70’s glam revivalists for whom the clock was always ticking towards midnight.
Count me in the former camp and on the right side of history on this one. Cut Your Teeth, a barely released odds & sods compilation of eleven singles and EP cuts from 2010 -2014, is the proof in the pudding. The band pressed this under Tuk Smith’s own Gypsy Rose Records banner in 2016, a year after signing with Earache and releasing their smashing debut LP, Electric Blood. The title suggests that Biters saw this record as a document of humble beginnings now left behind. But this is far from a superfan collection of rough demos and tossed-off covers. The eleven cuts on here sound improbably massive and suffer from none of the thin production that sabotaged the studio work of so many of Biters’ 1970’s glam, punk and power pop heroes.
Alright … what about those songs?
Side A opener “Hallucination Generation” is the most dubious inclusion on Cut Your Teeth. The minimal lyrics take Smith’s habitual recycling of 70’s punk & hard rock tropes to new lengths, not limited to the “Mommy ain’t right, Daddy ain’t right!” Cheap Trick rip in the chorus. It’s still great fun, thanks to killer riffing from Smith and Gabs in the outro (and a DIY music video homage to John Carpenter’s They Live). Some fantastic songs from this era – “No Connection”, “Hell is For Babies”, “Ain’t No Dreamer” – got left on the cutting room floor in order to include this one, but this is nitpicking.
Indigo b/w Summer of ’69
Next up is “Indigo”. This is the band at the peak of their powers. Tuk Smith typically wrote all of Biters’ material, but “Indigo” was co-written with Atlanta scene veteran and Lady Gaga guitarist Nico Constantine and Jessica Cochran and put out as a 7″ single in 2014.
Does “Indigo” fulfill Tuk’s ambition to write “Surrender” for Millennials? Well, there is a pulsating synth bit under the chorus that tips its cap to “Surrender” and “Dream Police”. But with its sugar rush of palm muted power chords propelling verses about , it’s more like “Summer of ’69” for people born in 1989.
Indigo is one of the two best power pop songs of the 21st century. The other one – Green Day’s “Whatshername” – has been streamed 80 million times on Spotify. “Indigo” is not available on the service at all.
The other gem on Side A is the twin guitar punk blitz “Hang Around”, one of Biters’ earliest recordings (2010) and an incendiary staple of the band’s live shows.
Under The Influences
Side B kicks off with two standouts, “So Many Nights” and “Melody For Lovers”, that feed into the revivalist kiss-offs of some listeners and critics. You don’t need to know a single Thin Lizzy song beyond “The Boys Are Back In Town” to hear the Irish rockers’ sound dripping all over “So Many Nights” and its guitar tones. But I do know more than that one and this would be a Top 5 Thin Lizzy song, so … cool.
Tuk Smith claims that “Melody For Lovers” is one of the first songs he ever wrote. In concert, the band often turned “Melody” into a medley, venturing off into mid-song breakdowns of everything from The Cars’ “Just What I Needed” to .38 Special’s “Hold On Loosely”.
“Anymore” (2010) is another early recording, a bubblegum earworm balanced with punchy guitars and gang vocals. Tuk Smith needs those Cheap Trick synths like Bruce Dickinson needs more cowbell, so those make another appearance here. But unlike “Hallucination Generation” and “So Many Nights”, “Anymore” demonstrates that from the very beginning this was a band capable of much more than just expertly retouching its favorite old records.
