Tooth Ache

Winters get cold in New England. This is especially true up around Burlington VT, where the icy wind whips pinecones around so hard they can pierce metal. Thankfully, Burlington-based musician Alexandria Hall brooks none of winter's guff. Using the nom de musique Tooth Ache, she creates oppositional swirls of pure electronic heat, her voice blending and bending amidst the beats and fat key chords she uses to keep her yurt warm. There are elements of deep club music in Alexandria's work, but her sound has an ecstatic wobble that constantly shifts its gravitational center up and down a long rubbery sonic shaft. This can leave it dangling dangerously, just beyond reach, or make it wriggle in your grasping hands like a fat live sausage. As with much other Vermont music, there's a kind of druggy loveliness to the way Tooth Ache songs come together in your head, and this should make us all happy that a friend left some electronic equipment in Hall's basement a few years ago, thus freeing her from the acoustic folkie shackles that had bound her earliest work. Ms. Hall has proposed three videos from the album, and the first - "Matador" - has now been shot and released. Much of the footage was done at Shenanigans, a combo bowling alley/strip club in White River Junction, VT, and it works really well both visually and narratively. "Eurydice" and "Not Even the Moon" should follow soon. So be prepared. And warm. Edition of 300. Recorded & mixed by Ryan Power (NNA Tapes artist who also recorded Happy Birthday & Ruth Garbus).