All Teeth and Knuckles

Though he hails from the left coast (S.F. to be exact) All Teeth and Knuckles MC/figurehead Sick Face Fallon is the anti-Mickey Avalon, calling out hipsters for their boorish behavior rather than reveling in it. But whether it’s by sardonic postulating or just a strange Catch 22, the jams of Club Hits to Hit the Clubs With will undoubtedly soundtrack the debauched nights of the very “douchebags in leather jackets” that Fallon spouts off about on the roiling “Fuck Your Jacket”. He and DJ UFO’s electro-crunk anthems are in line with what mainstays like DFA and Ed Banger are currently pumping out, yet it’s Fallon’s sarcastic sneer and hyper-critical eye on all the bullshit, whether it ironic or not, that helps separate ATAK from the rest of the neo-dance pack. Whether he’s professing his love for Lovefoxxx (“Let’s Undress and Listen to CSS”) or lambasting the locals for being mindless sheeple (“The Real San Francisco”), the throb ‘n’ groove remains constant, ensuring that the dancefloor will stay packed, the booze free flowing and that Fallon will soon have a new crop of almost-famous friends to set his venomous sights upon -- Lohan, Hilton and Spears, consider yourself warned. – Jason Jackowiak (2007, The Daily Copper) - Copper Press

All Teeth and Knuckles (ATAK for short) tell it like it is, practically smacking us in the face with truths about the Real San Francisco (to use the name of the opening track). To avoid any confusion about their genre and intentions, they titled the album Club Hits to Hit the Club With. Rather than beating around the bush critiquing hipster dress codes, they wrote "Fuck Your Jacket." The best track on the album "Look So Good" states the obvious about how "every single girl everywhere [at least at SF clubs] is trying to look so good." The track "Let's Undress and Listen to CSS" isn't a brooding emo ballad; it lays out the story of how singer Sick-Face Fallon wants to bang CSS's Lovefoxxx (and because the song is a clever allusion to a CSS song that is itself an allusion to DFA1979 makes "Let's Undress" the most meta club song we've ever heard).

Those three tracks ("Fuck Your Jacket", "Look So Good" and "Let's Undress") are the backbone of Club Hits, but all the tracks follow the same formula of maniacal dirty synths courtesy of Gio Fo Rio backing up bitter critiques of the oh-so-important SF hipster set that serves as Fallon's muse. Other songs explore the good neighborhoods of San Francisco, how to score a line from a guy you don't know, how to party every night and still pay rent and meditations on social drinking and what will happen when ATAK finally gets famous.

Think of it this way: a good album takes you back to a specific time and place right? Club Hits to Hit the Clubs With takes you back to the cavernous bathrooms of the hyper-trendy Arrow Bar where you're divvying up your stash to a group of oversexed hipster coke-whores in Cobrasnake shirts while wannabe rock stars lurk outside with stupid haircuts and the bass is so loud that nobody can feel their brain so you all just dance like flies and spill drinks on each other until finally it's morning and all you can do is criticize the people you surround yourself with.

This album is made for the clubs and definitely not for lazy Sunday afternoons around the house. Of course, if your Sunday afternoon is really an extension of Saturday night, then Club Hits will provide you with comforting reflections and advice on how to manage your exhaustingly hip lifestyle. - The Owl Mag

San Francisco's Patric Fallon and drum & bass DJ UFO! have created the ultimate meta-hipster-dance album of the '00s (not that there's much competition, but still...). More self-aware and snarky than Chromeo, All Teeth and Knuckles seemingly have set the contents of their blogs and text messages to concise, catchy electro-pop tracks that'll have you nonchalantly shaking your bedhead. If ATAK's sneering, mock-braggadocious lyrics aren't spoofing the whole designer-ball cap/all-over-print-hoodie-centric club scene, I'll eat Spank Rock's hijab collection. They claim to rep ""the real San Francisco,"" and their attention to detail suggests ATAK ain't bluffin'. Club Hits essentially is a documentary of metro nightlife circa now. Pop-cult historians, take note. - XLR8R Magazine

If LA's nightlife is the sluttiest in the country and New York's is the snottiest, San Francisco's is the ghost in the machine, all spooks and nightcrawlers. Being in the Mission or the Tenderloin at 1:30 on a Saturday night with several drunken notches on your belt can feel like being lost on some kind of moor. Most of that's due to climate and geography but there's a mood of disquiet that hangs itself around you here, mid-clubbing, and it ain't about the weather or the blonde phoenix who just reduced you to ashes. San Francisco's full of vampires, and a lot of them siphon from a distance.

Meet Patric Fallon, vampire hunter. On Club Hits To Hit The Clubs With, the charmingly misanthropic debut from the sick-hop outfit All Teeth & Knuckles, Fallon excoriates the poseurs and pansies of the City in a series of wisecracking, profanity-riddled kissoffs that edge themselves into a smarmy dither of disco before fading into blasts of spittle-spray. Fallon, who takes the stage name Sick Face, the better to be belligerent with (I guess), swings and sneers like Mike Skinner if Mike Skinner were Captain Bligh's nephew or some shit. (Giovanni de la Cruz, ATAK's other member, is content to call himself 'Gio Fo Rio,' which in its own way is every bit as ballsy as 'Sick Face'.) If at this point you've decided you hate this band, unheard, you should note that this is my review, and I'm the Decider.

Conceptually Club Hits is pretty straightforward—in the immortal words of Andrew WK, "party hard party hard party hard party party hard." More than that it's about being in San Francisco, all the wack and the wipeout there, but like similar geocentric pieces like Sound Of Silver or even Original Pirate Material, it doesn't resonate any less if you're not a native. Sonically there's everything from New Order-style synth fanfare, circa-Brotherhood, to the grit of indie smut peddlers like Spank Rock to the silly, sinewy spangles of Mount Sims (although I doubt Fallon has ever hit on, say, a professional stuntman). The snare effects are lurid and all over the place, dropping like eggs into boiling water or, in the case of "Manage It," like a hubcap off a speeding roof. Made largely on secondhand equipment, the tracks operate at a kind of low angle, taking shots from the floor up.

In "The Real San Francisco," Fallon spies a debutante and takes her on a whirlwind tour of the City's iconic neighborhoods: he raps languidly "let's roll to the TL/ despite all the junkies/ that neighborhood's as cool as hell" and later "to SOMA/ find a secret warehouse party/ with a secret entrance/ I'll show ya." Chances are ATAK has played a few of these. And crashed a few.

"Fuck Your Jacket" finds Fallon in full scream, miffed at bridge-and-tunnellers and other slickos who roll into his favorite bar. In a brisk little set-to of a skit he and Gio stage a phone call during which they discuss their mutual hatred of leather jackets. Over a brass-knuckle beat and tripped-out keys Fallon then offers the following, double-tracked: "fuck your hair/ fuck your jeans/ fuck your jacket/ fuck all that racket."

All Teeth & Knuckles could have blown it—all that vitriol and no place to put it is a common problem with acts this juiced. But it's hard not to like Sick Face. Unlike Skinner, beneath the bluster Fallon is more or less a romantic. He'll also do anything, pretty much, to get laid, to whatever extent that's romantic. On "Manage It" (which among other things spells out the easiest way to party on a budget, which is basically get next to the DJ) he takes a girl aside and assures her he's not too drunk for a little play "cause tonight's my Friday." The single "Let's Undress And Listen To CSS" isn't just a nip off CSS's "Lets Make Love And Listen To Death From Above" it's basically a (self-deprecating) valentine to Lovefoxxx, who, as the lyric has it, knocks Sick Face out of his (wait for it) soxxx. On the shimmering "Look So Good," meanwhile, Fallon affords himself the only outright sigh on the album, musing "what should I do with all of you/ trying to look so good?" It might be the best moment on Club Hits. If you squint you can see him loosening his tie, ordering one for the road. Pretty pieces of flesh may never get old, but they do get exhausting.

Fallon knows he's a contradiction. There's some self-loathing in all the self-awareness—to some extent that's the conceit of Club Hits, the push-and-pull of standing out versus fitting in. Songs like "Fuck Your Jacket" may tear the yuppies a new one but others like "The Real San Francisco" are filled with the guilty pleasure of being tragically hip. Fallon's hoodie and windbreaker may "both be black" (from "Fuck Your Jacket") but they've probably got American Apparel tags on them. At any rate, if you've ever had a night where the dancefloor looks like a pit of beasts into which you're about to be thrown, but you're fairly confident your thrift-store button-down fits you to the bone, All Teeth - Treble

S.F.'s very own All Teeth and Knuckles has stolen the soul of all things club. This deadly duo manages to produce electro hip-hop that's as punk as it is pop, pissed as it is fun. Taken from the forthcoming album Club Hits to Hit the Clubs With, "Let's Undress" is another drunken sex jam that's got the ladies forming a line and wallflowers ready for any dance party. - XLR8R.com

These two youngsters, Sick Face Fallon and Gio Fo'Rio, came out of the Central Valley a few years back with guns blazing, and have unleashed a fury of electro-hip hop with a distinctive punk attitude that finds ready listeners in this town's fickle and disenfranchised ears. - SF Weekly

..I wasn't ready for the thunderstorm that is All Teeth & Knuckles ... He's like a walking 'fuck you!' to all the hipster haircuts who infest the Mission. - XLR8R Magazine

Part of the allure for me was the difficulty I had trying to describe this band to other people. The synth bass beats are hard and contorted, the snares crack all over the place and the vocals are ground through a processor into a musically delicious pulp. - Bigstereo.net