by Emma Ingrisani
In the not-quite fifteen minutes that make up the slight, graceful song cycle The Toothpick 3, Patti covers a lot of new ground. Seven short tracks float through an array of sensory states that feel quietly vivid, specific, and emotionally saturated.
To date, Patti has been known for its savvy reshaping of jagged art-rock and punk elements, tight arrangements, and humorous bluster, delivered at a fever pitch. The best songs from 2018’s h.a.g.s. and 2019’s Good Big (“No Pain,” “Rubber,” “In Some Ways Yes”) clank, pant, and ricochet like the wheels and gears of a combusting cartoon car.
The album’s opener, “West West Midwest,” is recognizably adjacent to this raucous sound: a rubbery bass line competing with angular jabs of guitar, and barely hinged vocals barked over it all. But a little more than a minute later, the band strikes out in a different direction altogether. The shimmering, circular guitar line and loping beat of “The Rice Continuum” roll in, with an opaque chorus that could be lovelorn or detached, or even bitter: “Do I have to get over it? I would much rather stay the same.” The vocals are sweet and melodic, the dynamics soft and restrained; the song seems to unspool endlessly until, at the right moment, it stops.
This muted but daring quality continues through the rest of the album. Lyrics, phrasing, and instrumentation often seem to merge and intensify into a single entity. In “Junebugs,” the vocal and guitar melodies completely align, then dramatically break apart, the guitar flaring into a discordant riff and the vocals peeling away in an echoing falsetto.
While earlier songs tend to seethe with frustration and ironic indifference, the sound and style of The Toothpick 3 opens up a broader emotional register: wistful, regretful, and prevailingly calm, with heavier feelings kept on the brink of bleeding through (“Up Comes Rage, Up Comes Hate”). The obscurity of language and communication remains a focal point. The standout track “Calm and After” pairs an undulating guitar line with lyrics at once sentimental and stuck in the now: “Tell me again / Calm and after / Reaching for.” The song ends, both speech and gesture still incomplete.
Patti has been readily compared to Minutemen and Devo, but this album suggests new areas of influence or affinity, like the early-80s post-punk bands applying lo-fi tactics to softer subjects, and some of their closer pop contemporaries, too (“Dancing Bear” brings Joe Jackson to mind). Yo La Tengo, with its interest in relationship minutiae and conversation fragments, and especially its intimate, subsumed vocals, also feels like part of The Toothpick 3’s lineage. But while YLT has mastered the transcendent effects of epic noise jams, Patti keeps these songs on a short temporal leash.
Along with that self-imposed brevity, there is a reimagining of song structure that’s hard to pin down, but quite radical, and seemingly shaped to each song’s internal logic. Mostly stripped of padding and standard patterns, they don’t sound off-balance or truncated; they play out with a sense of proportion, wholeness, and even grandeur.
They also don’t sound overtly experimental. There’s an air of ease and effortlessness that invites the listener in, signaling the band’s artistic growth in the process. The Toothpick 3 marks a shifting or widening of focus to the complexity of everyday textures, and Patti steps into frame without hesitation.