Experimental Dental School: "Microscope Lab Voices"

Experimental Dental School’s charm lies as much in their agitated ravaging as in their name. Portland-based duo Shoko Horikawa and Jesse Hall (plus this record’s drummer) aren’t nearly as infatuated with improper dental practices as they are—if their website is any indication—with sea creatures, and their music brings to mind a panoply of weird things, among them malevolent carneys and the Toxic Avenger. Here they stay true to their name, though, and “Microscope Lab Voices” best emulates a dentist appointment gone terribly awry.

In the continuum of famous worst-nightmare scenarios, “Microscope Lab Voices” fits squarely between the Elvis-like number performed by sadist-dentist Orin Scrivello in Little Shop of Horrors and the absolutely horrifying scene from the B-movie classic Bloodsucking Freaks in which a clearly unaccredited dentist uses pliers to tear every last tooth out of the mouth of an innocent woman tied to a chair. In “Microscope Lab Voices” the intricate drums and beefy bass make up the complex chair in which you sit for examination, the poking guitar is the plaque-scraping sickle, the dreamy keyboard is the tangy fluoride toothpaste kids always get, and the climactic scraping at the end feels like the drill embedded with alloy bits that whirs against your teeth at 400,000 rpm.

If you’re already attuned to the twisted musical vocabularies of bands like Melt Banana and the Flying Luttenbachers, then this one should come off as a mere check-up and you’ll end up feeling refreshed.

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