review: Museum Mouth - Tears In My Beer

Museum Mouth
Tears In My Beer
Self-released, 2010

Bonus: Full album stream of Tears in My Beer at Punk News

Found Southport, NC’s Museum Mouth in the best of ways: through random chance. Showed up too early at an alt-country show only to find Museum Mouth and twenty of their closest friends indulging in lo-fi freakout. I walked in expecting nothing, only to find something great.

It is true--from all accounts Museum Mouth is still in high school and hail from a small southern coastal town--but have no caution or fear in following Museum Mouth, this band is for real.

And when I say “real,” I don’t mean some talented copycat with emo bangs, I mean Savannah Levin, Graham High and Karl Kuehn have got something here. And Tears In My Beer equals a rough cut of Times New Viking, Vivian Girls, No Age, Be Your Own Pet or Jeff the Brotherhood.

Museum Mouth possesses this droll easiness with a talented carelessness that molds pop-punk anthems with garage rock. The bridge of “The End of Days” could be found on the current Titus Andronicus record, a laid-back split in “Outside” casually masks some nice progressive guitar parts with lyrics that apologize to all their literary heroes.

And those songs are at the end--which care progressively more mature than the beginning ones--they all deal with breakup essentially, but instead of pining and regretting these songs are more rumination.

One of my favorite songs is “I Stopped Caring” with the lines: “You’ve broken me down to the point/ where all my maturity has been replaced by insecurity/ since when have I lacked the confidence to say the words/ that I’m thinking” and then there’s Karl’s (I think) lackluster fuzzed out voice adding deadpan lines to head-shaking surf beats.

Full disclosure here--I also live near the beach, so when the band says that “when the going gets tough/ I’m gonna go to the beach,” well I’m an easy make. But with classy garage punk rock that blends honesty without cheesiness, that’s a young band to hold on to. Tears in My Beer is fun, but not flip; it is memorable without being annoying, it is impressive, without being perfect---but it’s so close. Proceed with full confidence.