Norwich is not the first place most people think of as a hub of riveting music but it’s where female duo Sink Ya Teeth hail from. Consisting of bassist Gemma Cullingford and singer Maria Uzor - with both throwing synth into the pot where necessary – the pair have proved themselves a vital presence in the live arena. Their propulsive take on post-punk’s spiked, deadpan funkiness is timely and more-ish, and has been the backbone of their sets, as well as their self-titled debut album. The foundations of their second album retain that purposeful throb, but musically they’ve persuasively expanded their palette in an exciting – and danceable - fashion.
Whereas Sink Ya Teeth previously brought to mind bands such as New York no-wavers ESG, Two owes a greater debt to both techno – check out the late night MDMA head-nod beats of “Somewhere Else” – and the moodier end of Eighties electro-pop. At least three songs are percussively grooved sonic cousins to Soft Cell’s bleakly caustic 1983 masterpiece The Art of Falling Apart, notably the dissonant, doomy “On the One”. Another cut, “Stella”, also falls into this camp, and is a suitably angsty, paranoid suburban tale of a threatening neighbour complaining about the noise.
Not all tracks are for the dancefloor – the sweetly contemplative “Breathe” recalls the slower fare of long-ago synth dons Yazoo – but most of them are. Sink Ya Teeth are in their comfort zone exploring their very own gnarly, often tribalistic zone of foot-moving attack, and they come up trumps on tunes such as “The Hot House”, four minutes of contagious, pared back electro-funk. Ending with the gothic, grungey, spooked unrest of “Blue Room”, with it’s “I am coming to get you” chorus, Two is a richly promising second album, the sound of a band expanding on what everyone liked about them in the first place, experimenting, but retaining a relentless underlying catchiness.
Below: Watch the video for "The Hot House" by Sink Ya Teeth
