To your left (stage right), there’s an illustration of Abraham Levitan, the lead singer for Chicago’s Baby Teeth, with his arm extended in the air as if in a hallelujah stance, summoning all of the powers that be for emphasis on all of the lyrics coming out of his mouth. Even during this recording session, he was trying to burn our house, your house, every known house down to embers and the brown earth it placed its legs and underbelly. There’s no rare, medium or medium rare for this band. Everything is well done, 100-percent obliterated and leveled, jacked up with irresistible lightning, the very kind of energy that stands the hairs up on your arms when you’re amongst a large crowd cheering for something good. It’s a breathtaking thing and Baby Teeth doesn’t rest on it. You turn yippy and feel like you need to tell everyone you know what you just saw after experiencing these four live and in person. It’s personal and it’s deep in a way that you’re for certain that this is what those who bandy about three-syllable words might call breathtaking. It’s right in front of you and…yeah, you’re sure that’s what it is. This session happened on the final weekend in March. Originally, we were to have the hosts at the beginning of the month two days before we hurried off to Texas, but we decided to pack. While they played no more than 50 feet from our studio that day – opening for the gentlemanly/womanly Bobby Conn at the Rock Island Brewing Company, we weren’t able to make these four songs happen until the Midwest Music Fest in Iowa City brought them back through for a date opening for Tilly and the Wall at a sold out Mill. “Snake Eyes” scared me in a good way and then we all had some pizza. – Sean Moeller

First song
Snake Eyes (Baby Teeth) [2.86MB] [1769 downloads]


– unreleased
This is a new song that we arranged just before the Daytrotter session. It started as a demo that Abraham recorded at his home studio and we sat on it for a while. But when decided to play it in rehearsal it took on a life of its own. It’s fun to play and this is the only recorded version.

Second song
Taste The Wine (Baby Teeth) [2.97MB] [1504 downloads]


– original version appears on The Simp
We’ve been playing this one for a while and it’s on our latest record The Simp. This really benefits from the addition of Michael Lyons who is playing guitar with us now. Jim and I played the guitar parts for the record, but we never could recreate them live until the last few months.

Third song
The Birds Are Crying (Baby Teeth) [4.41MB] [1464 downloads]


– original version appears on The Simp
We call this one “Birds” for short. This was one of the last demos that I heard before we had all the songs for the The Simp. Abraham and I were talking about needing an upbeat tune to round out the song selection and he played this for me one night. I flipped when I heard it and knew we had to work it into shape.

Fourth song
The Rules (Baby Teeth) [4.38MB] [1419 downloads]


– unreleased
“The Rules” is also a brand new song and this is the only recording as well. Abraham claims that the majority of these lyrics came from a self-help book on how to meet women. He’s spoken for, so he doesn’t need them, but there’s also some lines about “mama.” I don’t know exactly what’s going on, but I love the rhythm section on this one.
Says Abraham: “The Rules” was actually a self-help book written in the 1990s for women looking to bag a husband, encouraging them to play games, not return phone calls right away, etc. All the lyrics were inspired by reader reviews on amazon.com.