The Underbites would like you to meet the best kind of Good Girl — one who’s still a little bad — in their catchy new pop-punk single and video, premiering exclusively on Tinnitist.
Reminiscent of fellow New Yorkers The Ramones and delivered with the foursome’s trademark combination of humour and punch, Good Girl introduces you to a heroine who has given up “everything except weed and sex.” One of several lifelike characters who inhabit the band’s fittingly titled upcoming EP, Four Songs About Girls, Good Girl’s protagonist is personified in lovely colour in a celebratory rooftop dance in their new video.
“Good Girl isn’t intended to be smarmy,” explains singer-guitarist Jon Fox. “I saw the soul singer Simi Stone live and when I saw her play her song Good Girl, I thought ‘How interesting would it be to write a song from the point of view of the character — from someone who turned good … but not that good.'”
If the pop-punk onslaught of the ’90s and early 2000s left you with the impression that punk loses its edge with the introduction of melodies and hooks, The Underbites are here to remind us all that accessibility and grit don’t have to be mutually exclusive. Founded by guitarists Fox and Kurt Feldhun, The Underbites formed in 2020, but their origins date back to the halcyon days of punk. “Kurt and I,” says Fox, “learned after the fact that we’d both been standing in line for the same Clash show at Bonds Casino in Times Square. We both took a ‘day off’ from high school for that.
“Earlier in high school,” Fox continues, “I saw Neil Young at Madison Square Garden for Rust Never Sleeps. I was telling a friend who was into punk rock how cool I thought it was that they carried Young off in a giant sleeping bag at the end of the show. My friend goes, ‘That sounds all right, but I went to see Iggy Pop at The Palladium and he was throwing himself off the speakers and writhing in broken glass.’ I was like, ‘Oh… well that sounds pretty cool.’ ”
For Fox and Feldhun, The Underbites mark a return to some of their earliest musical loves. But you’re just as likely to hear a passing flash of, say, Attractions-era Elvis Costello in Feldhun’s playing as you are a chugga-chugga punk riff. In fact, for a band that describe themselves as “unrepentant traditionalists,” The Underbites give themselves lots of headroom to draw from whatever they feel like dialing up.
Listening to the band’s full-length debut Sort It Out alongside the new EP Four Songs About Girls, one is reminded that the classic CBGB, SoCal, NYHC and Warped Tour scenes were all highly distinct from one another. But The Underbites possess enough fluency with the canon to make it sound as if it all flows from the same source. The Four Songs About Girls track Sincerely Jemma Jane, for example, started out as a Rancid-influenced anthem, but it ended up landing closer to Social Distortion.
Further afield, Michael Hoffman’s snare figure at the start of Che Guevara nods to John Bonham’s iconic Rock And Roll intro, but he executes it with sufficient finesse to recall Los Lobos’ Louie Perez channeling lendgary Meters drummer Zigaboo Modeliste. “Michael,” Fox explains, “approaches things from a musical perspective — not just a rhythmic perspective. Meanwhile, our bassist Ethan Rosenblatt likes Rush and King Crimson as much as he likes Mike Watt. So there’s a lot of precision and heart in his playing. Those guys really help set our sound apart. Because of them, we can be loose but also tight at the same time.” Fox adds: “We really like Little Richard, Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis too. Even musicals. And Kurt’s north star has always been Bowie. So when people ask me, I just say ‘We play rock ’n’ roll.’ ”
Lyrically, Fox draws as much from The Beach Boys, Squeeze and Robyn Hitchcock as The Sex Pistols. With Sort It Out, The Underbites proved that provocative music can provoke thought in the best sense of the word. Whether tackling activist posturing, consumer culture, economic decline, racial division, the sleazy machinations of politics, or polarizing political figures, Fox is masterful at jolting listeners with an initial shock that, on closer inspection, reveals layers of thought. Underbites songs don’t spoon-feed you what they’re trying to say, which leaves fertile ground for listeners to walk away with some much-needed new perspective. In a world that’s constantly shouting at us, Fox knows all too well that shouting by itself doesn’t do the trick. Sure, he shouts a good deal too, but his songs are spiked with nuggets of wit and intelligence that belie their surface presentation.
“There’s also,” Fox points out, “a lot of humour, which is such an important part of the palette.” Indeed, The Underbites remind us just how much social commentary and humour need each other — without one, the other gets grating. Conversely, even when being outwardly playful on Four Songs About Girls, Fox paints a world filled with living, breathing characters who are richly drawn in three dimensions. The ladies who inhabit the songs are as believable as they are eccentric.
“We don’t want to tip over into comedy rock,” says Fox. “That’s not the intention. But you don’t wanna beat people over the head either. I try to couch my opinions in storytelling — and vice-versa. We’re going in a more political direction again with our upcoming full-length, but it’s political with a small-p.”
Watch the video for Good Girl above, sample more sounds from The Underbites below, and follow them on Instagram and Facebook.
