In that exemplary rock & roll movie
The Music Man, Professor Harold Hill teaches a group of aspiring young musicians to play by using "the Think System," where they master an instrument by simply thinking about a song to play on it for an extended period. Vancouver's
Necking have managed something similar -- they spent months telling people that they were a punk rock band, and even though it started out as a joke, they not only became a for-real group, they happen to be a good one to boot.
Necking sounded rough but very promising on their debut EP, 2017's Meditation Tape, and they've raised their game considerably on their full LP, 2019's
Cut Your Teeth, sounding tougher, tighter, and more emphatic than on their first go-round. The members of
Necking had musical experience before they started playing, but they barely sounded like a band on their early recordings.
Cut Your Teeth is a different matter altogether; bassist Sonya Rez and drummer Melissa Kuipers lock in brilliantly and give the performances the hard kick they need, while Nada Hayek's guitar is full of slash and roar, and the keyed-up shout of vocalist Hannah Karren gives her a soapbox while also bringing fire, smarts, and a poison-pen wit to the songs. Like
Childbirth and
Chastity Belt,
Necking is a punk band whose worldview is heavily informed by both feminism and sharp wit, and they find humor in the common annoyances of a woman's life in "Big Mouth," "Still Exist," and "Rover." But there's no mistaking their disgust in the anti-glass ceiling diatribe "Boss" and the litany of disrespect to art and culture in "No Playtime." No matter how funny some of this may be, the last thing
Necking are trying to do is pass it off as just a joke.
Cut Your Teeth is great, passionate, rabble-rousing rock from a group with something to say, and if this is how good they've come be after a few months of pretending they were a band, imagine what might accomplished if they put on their thinking caps and pondered global warming for a year or so.