It's fitting the night the Imposition Tour enters Texas, late into the night, I open the inbox to find an email from Dull Tools announcing its latest release. As one of the first non-Parquet Courts related releases on Dull Tools (co-owned by Christopher Pickering and PC's Andrew Savage), Austin's Beth Israel follow-up the self-titled cassette with Dental Denial, a debut LP of lonerish post-punk that menaces with grit and maintains a casual relationship with despair.
It's taken two streaming listens to Dental Denial to determine I'll be seeking out Beth Israel sets among the turd mountain of SxSW showcases. Among the immediate reasons to acquire the LP are “Tommy Boy”, a derranged, fracture of paranoia in which Beth Israel employ the dialogue in a scene from Chris Farley's eponymous classic, turning his spazzed attempt at leveling with a roadhouse waittress into weirdo lyric affirmation. The risk of being too clever is cut off at the jugular by the frontman's ability to deliver Farley's lines as though he's Private Pile in Full Metal Jacket, slumped over a toilet with a thousand yard stare in his eyes.
Much like the Yuppies record on Dull Tools, Beth Israel tap into a sick skull consciousness that causes the guitars to bend with scoliosis and the catchiest of pop passages to seem like accidents by savants that escaped padded rooms.
Beth Israel's Dental Denial is out March 18 on LP via Dull Tools, but the band will have copies at the Brooklyn Vegan Showcase on Friday.
