New music review with singles from Party Dozen and Tooth
Our weekly fix of the best new music as Julia Mason (aka The Decibel Decoder) brings us her new music review with singles from Party Dozen Full Powers and Tooth Take Me As I Am
Artist: Party Dozen
Track: Full Powers
Sydney experimental psych-noise-pop duo Party Dozen edge closer to the release of new album 21 Bum Salute, out 6 November via City Slang, with the release of final single, Full Powers, a swaggering, swampy rock track about the intoxicating highs and ugly excesses of power. It starts confident and euphoric before slowly tipping into something wilder and heavier. The band have also just announced a London show on 29 November at the Shacklewell Arms.
Kirsty Tickle is given free rein to fully cut loose as Full Powers moves from a swirling and melodic verse towards a pounding ending, the squalls and squeals absolutely joyous in their rebellion. As much as any song on 21 Bum Salute, and titled utterly appropriately, the track shows where Party Dozen are at now: unafraid to experiment with traditional pop structures, big production and melody lines that veer perilously close to lyrics, yet not compromising or sacrificing the raw power or wild abandon that has carried them through four increasingly heard albums and around the world.
On the single, Party Dozen shares: "There’s 'Full Powers' good and there’s 'Full Powers' bad. The good is when you’re personally becoming too powerful, an angel pisses on you, everything is going very well and suddenly you’re gliding down the street like King Swinging Dick. The bad is when one side has all the power and more is not enough. Powerlust, greedmongering, gluttonous fiends. This track switches between the two. It has a really strong, confident feel that gets a little uneasy as the track progresses."
“It's like we just don't care anymore,” says Jonathan Boulet. “But in the best way.”
The work of Kirsty Tickle (saxophone, vocals) and Jonathan Boulet (drums, loops, production) on 21 Bum Salute finds the critically-acclaimed, semi-improvised duo feeling liberated from their peers, their worries, and what the hell they’re supposed to sound like now.
“We're having more fun than we've ever had before,” says Tickle. “This album is kind of putting a middle finger up and waving at someone with a smile at the same time. We're egging you on to have a good time.”
Emerging in 2017 from the warehouses of the Sydney experimental noise-rock scene, Party Dozen arrive at the release of their fifth album, 21 Bum Salute, in peak form. Over the course of four, increasingly perverse albums of psych-tinged rock peppered with pop noise and bursts of doom in equal measure, they’ve transformed from gleeful noise-makers producing DIY albums from a tiny room in Marrickville, NSW, to globe-hopping, critically-adored favourites – producing DIY albums from a tiny room in Marrickville.
“On this album we’ve got it down to the absolute best part of the idea for you,” says Tickle. “We’ve trimmed the fat. Party Dozen is just what Jono and I want to do,” Or as Boulet says, “We wash our hands of this world.”
Party Dozen recorded, mixed and mastered 21 Bum Salute completely themselves, over a three month span. Inspired by spooky “old recordings” as well as the primal impulses of acts like ESG and Bikini Kill. 21 Bum Salute, named after a peculiar, larrikin ritual in Australia’s arid Northern Territory, condenses consecutive years of jam sessions, loops and improvisations into just over half an hour’s worth of fizzing, strutting, striking sonics from the fringes. “We were looking for groove, some new takes, some weird fucking side quests,” says Boulet. “Some of these songs are the weirdest, oddest ditties we’ve ever made. Which I love. There's doors we unlocked that we didn’t know were available to us.”
“The ideas come when it's a weird blend of two things that create a perfect balance,” says Boulet of the Party Dozen magic. “Something that sounds fucked up and you can only just hear what's happening. It’s a real unspoken excitement that happens when we're both into it. It’s the real reflection of both our creativity.”
“If you want to get on board with us, come,” says Tickle. “We're having a great time."
Party Dozen Live Dates
November
5 - Ed Castle, Adelaide, SA - AUS
6 - Brightside, Brisbane, QLD - AUS
7 - Crowbar, Sydney. NSW - AUS
11 - The Bridge, Castlemaine, VIC - AUS
13 - Nightcat, Melbourne, VIC - AUS
14 - Whalers Hotel, Warrnambool, VIC - AUS
29 - Shacklewell Arms, London - UK
30 - Le PopUp, Paris FR
December
2 - Oedipus, Amsterdam NL
3 - Monarch, Berlin DE
* * *
Artist: Tooth
Track: Take Me As I Am
London quartet Tooth announce their signing to Parlophone alongside sharing Take Me As I Am, their debut single for the legendary imprint and first new material since this summer’s debut EP, Restless in Bloom.
Kicked immediately into gear by crack drummer Roy Lowe’s driving intro, Take Me As I Am is arresting from the get-go: fusing churning and interlocking guitars to frontman Tom Pollock’s increasingly direct vocals. While it still captures the bristling energy of Tooth at their finest - driven ever onward by guitarist Ben Ashley’s sublime, Sonic Youth-esque leads and Charlie Arnison’s motorik bassline - there’s a keener sense of dynamics and melody at play: it’s the sound of a band racing to maturity, for whom turning in one of 2026’s most acclaimed EPs is just the starting line.
“Take Me As I Am represents a big development in our songwriting from what we did on Restless In Bloom both lyrically and instrumentally,” explains Pollock. “On the EP, I’d written lyrics exploring coming of age, young romance and other typical teenage tropes. However, with this song I turned to focus on ideas of identity within my experience of being in a band, where people perhaps feel they know or understand me, despite often feeling like I don’t even know or understand myself. The lyrics are conversational, ebbing and flowing between both a desperation to be accepted, and a resentment toward expectations of what or who I should be.”
Recorded at the historic Battery Studios in London with producer Shrink (NewDad, Cardinals, Opus Kink) and mixed by Mike Crossey (Arctic Monkeys, Wolf Alice), Take Me As I Am has quickly become a new fan favourite in the band’s breakout live show. It lands with perfect timing as the quartet prepare to head out on an autumn UK tour which includes their biggest headline London show to date at The Garage on 27 October, with multiple dates already sold out.
Across the next month, they’ll head all over the UK from Brighton to Glasgow, Milton Keynes to Manchester, spreading the Tooth gospel: a sweaty, raucous throwdown of millennial indie and second-wave emo as prone to erratic, noisy breakdowns as it is to shout-along choruses. 2026 has already seen them open for the likes of Keo, Dust, Sunny Day Real Estate and Shame, hit up festivals from Reading & Leeds to Outbreak and All Points East to Wilderness, and sell out an assortment of London headline shows. Now they return to the live circuit a rapidly-evolving beast, one for whom the upper echelons of indie rock are squarely in sight.
Over the past few years, the quartet have meticulously honed their craft, becoming one of the most talked-about new bands in the country for their riotous live shows. Their burgeoning presence on the London circuit quickly led to the group being picked up by Raw Power Management (Heartworms, Bring Me The Horizon) and recording Restless in Bloom with producer Kev Jones (Wunderhorse). Now, with Take Me As I Am they lay down a new marker for what Tooth can be: still filled with the boundless energy of youth, but with a keenly developing rock nous that marks them out as one for the long haul.
Tooth Live Dates
October
13 - Glasgow, UK - King Tuts
14 - Newcastle, UK - Zerox [sold out]
15 - Nottingham, UK - Bodega [sold out]
16 - Leeds, UK - Hyde Park Book Club [sold out]
17 - Manchester, UK - Neighbourhood Festival
19 - Bristol, UK - Louisiana [sold out]
21 - Brussels, BE - Botanique
22 - Paris, FR - Supersonic
23-24 - Rotterdam, NL - Left of the Dial
27 - London, UK - The Garage
29 - Swansea, UK - Bunkhouse
30 - Portsmouth, UK - Wedgewood Rooms
31 - Brighton, UK - Dust
November
4 - Birmingham, UK - Hare & Hounds [sold out]
5 - Milton Keynes, UK - Crauford Arms
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