In Sweet Tooth, Scott Gagner offers ten streamlined nuggets of highly palatable ear candy as a reprieve from the darkness of modern life. But don’t mistake shiny for shallow. Gagner deploys all of pop’s best confections — twelve-string guitars, stacked male/female harmonies, wall-to-wall hooks, analog synths — as sonic tonics for anxiety and dread (recording took place in Minneapolis during the federal ICE siege). “It would have been easy to write a dozen sad ballads right now,” Gagner says. Instead, he took on the deeper challenge of transmuting despair into dessert.
“An irresistable collection of pop delights.”~Power Pop News
“Sugar Rush” epitomizes the therapeutic glucose of the record. Like a peanut M&M, the song’s sweet colorful shell contains something substantive: a dopamine-driven ethos of radical joy. When the world is burning, why not make the solo a romp of tri-harmonized electric sitars? Why not unleash an aural avalanche overflowing with artistic gluttony, gorging on pop opulence? The song asks why we would deny ourselves any of life’s pop pleasures when, in Gagner’s hands, they are here in abundance to buoy us.
Gagner’s Sweet Tooth proves that willfully choosing bright colors, sunshine, and giddiness can serve as a defiant antidote to dread. So yes, this record may conceal some broccoli in your brownies. But as we struggle to thrive in this impossible world, Sweet Tooth proves that sugar can be sustenance, even medicine.
Scott Gagner is a Minnesota-based songwriter, singer, and multi-instrumentalist. He has collaborated with members of Elvis Costello & The Attractions, Big Star, The Posies, R.E.M., Los Lobos, and Midlake. His albums routinely land on year-end Top-10 lists, with Hummingbird Heart voted "Best of the Year." His songs and videos have been featured nationally on such platforms as USA Today, and locally on The Current. Sweet Tooth is his eighth album.
