Perfect Teeth: 4AD Announces Reissue Of The Best Album From Unrest

My friend Wolfgang probably told me about Mark Robinson and Teen-Beat Records as early as 1987. He worked at Tower Records in D.C. with Mark -- in the tape department, 'natch -- and Mark was in the very early years of the label and Unrest (the Lisa Carol Freemont cassette may have just come out).

But I didn't pay attention to Unrest until I knew someone in the band.

I worked at a few record stores in College Park, Maryland in the late Eighties and knew Bridget Cross as a regular customer. I used to listen to the University of Maryland's radio station -- WMUC -- in the Record and Taple Exchange and can remember one time calling up Bridget on the air to request "All Cats are Grey" by The Cure one rainy weekday afternoon. (Of course she played it!) I even got to see 10,000 Maniacs and Robyn Hitchcock in 1988 with her and her friend, when she sold me and a friend her two extra tickets.

So while I was happy when Velocity Girl put out music with Bridget as lead vocalist, I was over-the-moon when I read that Unrest had signed to 4AD. I had spent the previous few years chasing after every release from the imprint in the import bins in record stores across the DMV, so the idea that someone I knew could be in a band on the UK label was very inspiring, and sort of proof that for those with the talent and drive, a dream could be realized.

With 1993's Perfect Teeth Unrest, after various itereations, had seemed to have put out a perfect record. It's so neatly realized, so utterly lacking in fluff, that it's clearly the product of a very singular vision and culmination of the sort of ambition Mark Robinson had shown with his carefully-curated offerings up to that point. Phil Krauth and Bridget Cross were equal parts of the magic of Unrest in 1993, the rhythms and harmonies being what gave the Unrest sound in 1993 so much juice and spark. The album, with its striking cover -- the Robert Mapplethorpe photo of Cath Carroll of Miaow -- was the best American record on 4AD since those early Throwing Muses and Pixies releases.

Now, the imprint is reissuing a 30th anniversary edition of the album on vinyl, CD, and digital on March 28. It makes some kind of odd sense that the 30th Anniversary Edition is coming 32 years after the record came out. And the wait will be worth it given the bonus cuts added to the original Simon LeBon-produced masterpiece: 12 tracks from singles, B-sides, the majority of the Isabel Bishop EP and so on.

You can order this new edition of Unrest's Perfect Teeth on vinyl, CD, or digital via 4AD.

You can pre-order the digital via Bandcamp too.

[Photo: Erin Smith]