Porij singer and keyboardist Scout “Egg” Moore says that the band’s debut full-length is a coming-of-age album. “It was written in a really formative time, our mid-twenties,” Moore tells Apple Music. “You’re trying to figure out what’s going on, who you are. I felt quite lost. I was confronted with myself and all sides of myself.” The resulting record, says Moore, is 11 snapshots of how they were feeling at the time of its creation. “It’s a fully fleshed-out picture of me, which can be good and bad. It’s all about acceptance, baby.” Accordingly, Teething paints a multidimensional picture, a meld of bittersweet reflection and euphoric hooks, an intersection of indie-pop dynamism, pulsing garage beats, drum ’n’ bass urgency, and club banger exhilaration. The quartet has put out a series of captivating, propulsive releases since the original lineup formed at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester in 2019 but they wanted Teething to represent a clean slate, a daring step into the future. “It’s a completely fresh musical experience for the audience,” states Moore. “It’s everything you love from before but souped up a bit. We had time to go down all the rabbit holes and experiment.” Teething is a heady, kaleidoscopic listen. Moore, bassist and keyboardist James Middleton, and guitarist Jacob Maguire guide us through it, track by track. “Marmite” Scout Moore: “I think this is such a strong statement. It’s the first angry song I’ve ever written. I think there’s something really playful about anger because anger is almost camp—it’s so silly that you feel furious and so it was just a lot of fun. James had written this beat and he’d been inspired by a hot stranger on the bus that he said smelled like Marmite—I think that’s his story. He sent over the beat and I was like, ‘Oh, this is really fun.’ It felt like a good opening statement. It was never in question that that was going to start the album.” “Unpredictable” SM: “This is made up of vocal samples that Nathan [Carroll, drummer] turned into LFOs synths and we built this beat. It’s quite a bleak song if you listen to the lyrics. I was missing [the time] when you’re a child and there’s no pressure and you’re just chilling and you’re just bopping to school and having a great time. I’d just moved into a new house and I was like, ‘Ah, this is all quite intense, it feels like there’s a lot of pressure on me right now,’ and it’s about that. But what’s great is if you listen to the song without really listening to the lyrics, you’re like, ‘Ah, what a bop!’ I really enjoy having that contrast of light and dark.” “Don’t Talk To Me” Jacob Maguire: “Nathan got a demo down for this and it was quite different to how it ended up. It was a lot more spacey, almost orchestral.” James Middleton: “Yeah, those luscious strings at the end dominated much more of the song.” SM: “It was too spacey, and so we went to my house and I was like, ‘What if we added cowboy guitars? It’s time to be cinematic.’ We had these jangly guitars, we’ve got a baritone in verse one and two, super fun. The song is about a breakdown of communication between people where it’s like, ‘Oh, there’s not even any point trying anymore because you’re not going to hear what I’m saying and I’m not going to hear what you’re saying, let’s just leave it there.’” “Endlessly Waiting” SM: “I wrote this when we were on tour with Metronomy and we had a day off. There’s this thing in my life where my best friend Laura goes to New York at Easter and every time she does, my life falls apart in very weird ways. The universe doesn’t like it when she goes to New York. She can go to other places, it’s only when she goes to New York that everything gets wild. This song is all about that. It’s basically like, ‘Please come home because you are really messing up my life right now by being in New York.’ It’s like there’s a cosmic curse. We actually went to New York a few weeks ago and played there, so hopefully the curse has lifted!” “My Only Love” SM: “This started off as a bog-standard love song. I was in a long-term relationship with my first love and it was meant to be a really sweet statement. Then at Easter, one of the times that Laura went away to New York, we had a huge fight and it was a horrible weekend and that’s when we were writing the bridge for this song. I was like, ‘Guys, I don’t know if I can write the bridge, I’m not feeling a lot of love right now.’ The tone shifted and it became a really present love song, saying, ‘I’m not going to make grand gestures and I can’t say that I love you forever but I love you so much right now and that’s all that’s important.’ That’s what this love song is about.” “Ghost” Jacob Maguire: “I had a little guitar riff, which I came up with quite randomly when we were all remotely recording from different parts of the country, and the other guys seemed to like it. It was quite early on in the process, we all took it to the rehearsal room and came up with the sections there. We played it live really early on as well, quite ad hoc when we had extra time at a gig.” SM: “It’s all about a friendship breakup. We always talk about romantic relationships ending but I think it can be even harder to lose a friend and to have that relationship dissolve. It’s cherishing the moments before you know that you’re not really going to see each other anymore, looking back at the things that we could have nurtured.” “Stranger” SM: “What an emotional song. ‘Stranger’ is all about my experience as a nonbinary individual and me coming to terms with that. I think I felt a lot of frustration because I just really want to be normal. For a long time I felt like, ‘Oh, it was so close, I was so close to just being a normal kid.’ This song is all about that. I really disliked it for a long time because I think it’s one of the most vulnerable tunes on the record, I don’t think I’d put myself out there like that before. I realized quite recently it really wasn’t just about me, even though I wrote this song purely for my own demons. We played it in January and this woman came up to me and said, ‘Hey, I’m a teacher. I teach loads of kids who are nonbinary, and thank you so much for being a voice.’ There was a real shift for me, like, ‘This is actually quite important.’ I know I wrote it for me but if this can be helpful in any way to anyone else, then that’s really important. After that, I was like, ‘I love this song.’” “Sweet Risk” SM: “I wrote this as a dare with my ex because we were doing this thing—they’re a musician—and we were like, ‘You write a song and I’ll write a song and we’ll do a PowerPoint presentation at the end of the day.’ I wrote this, I had this little idea and it was called ‘Sweet Bisc’ because we were talking about biscuits. I put it on the SoundCloud and the boys were like, ‘We really like that!’ I just thought it was really silly because the intro is the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever heard. It was clearly not meant to be a serious actual song submission, but it was really fun. And so I was like, ‘What sounds like bisc? Risk?’ and then I wrote all the other lyrics about it. It’s one of the nice silly moments on the album. It’s all about what if you took that risk, what could happen?” “Gutter Punch” James Middleton: “I’d been listening to loads of the [experimental hip-hop/electronic] band clipping. and I noticed in a lot of clipping. songs that they have a figure where they have a kick drum with a big blast of noise on it and that’s how I came up with the sound of the chorus. I’d also just been in a huge dubstep phase for the past four years so that’s kind of how the backbeat of it came along.” SM: “I became nocturnal when I moved into my new flat. I was writing the songs and it all became a bit strange. I was walking around a lot, and then I had a dream where I was in a Volvo car advert. Then I heard this beat and I was like, ‘I am in a Volvo car advert, I’m writing lyrics to that one, here we go.’ The lyrics are also quite bleak on this one, but quite fun.” “You Should Know Me” SM: “We’d been doing Basement Jaxx’s ‘Where’s Your Head At’ in our set the year before and I was like, ‘I want to have a song that has that energy.’ It was flowing out. James came over, did some wobs, and then we just wanted to do something epic and Jacob whipped out that wizard guitar line. The song’s all about bravado—another side of me, whether that’s attractive or not. It kills at the end of the live set. It’s full carnage, maximalism, let loose.” “Slow Down” SM: “I wrote this while ago. I’d just gotten ill with fibromyalgia, which is a chronic illness, and I was really depressed and I was really coming to terms with it. This album takes you on the whole character arc, and you go through all of these different palettes and worlds and then to have it come down to just the voice and piano at the end where it’s like, ‘OK, this record is all about self-awareness, I’m on my own now, I’m aware of it and I understand it and that feels good.’ It felt like the perfect ending.”