Ain't

London five-piece Ain’t return today with their sullen second single “Teething”.

The track comes mid-way through what has been an incendiary year for the band. Having already played showcases for the likes of So Young, Rough Trade, The Alt Escape, and The Windmill, their debut single “Oar” arrived earlier in May and marked out the quintet as that rarest of things - a band with a feverish word-of-mouth reputation, despite having not released a single official track, delivering on all the promise that they had built up. The single saw widespread support with coverage from the likes of Dork, Stereogum, NME, CLASH, The Line Of Best Fit, and So Young, as well as, radio play from BBC Radio 6 Music, Radio X, Apple Music 1 and more.

Bringing together the stranger side of ‘90s guitar, post-punk, and shoegaze from both sides of the Atlantic, Ain’t expertly toe the line between nostalgia and ingenuity. Comprised of George Ellerby (Guitar/Vox), Ed Randall (Guitar), Hanna Baker Darch (Vox), Chapman Ho (Bass Guitar), and Joe Lockstone (Drums), Ain’t’s compulsion to create seeps through with urgency and heft.

This latest offering sees the band expand on that dynamic, scowling sound. Recorded with Oli Barton Wood (Porridge Radio, Shame, The Big Moon), muscular, hook-driven melodies interplay above an uneasy sense of motion. Beginning as a simple guitar motif that returned to guitarist Ed Randall’s fingers almost every time he picked up the instrument, it wasn’t until bandmates Ellerby and Ho were both suffering from burgeoning wisdom teeth that Randall’s original scrappy idea turned into “Teething”. A song soaked in self-pity and the all-encompassing sorrow. Hanna Baker’s driving vocal delivery helps to coalesce the arrangements, with Ain’t’s crushing gut punching ability on full view.

Speaking on the single, the band says “Teething is definitely our creepiest song – Ed wrote it ages before Ain’t and the lyrics ‘you don’t even notice me from the window’ encapsulates the whole premise of the song neatly. It’s about vying for someone’s attention when they couldn’t care less – and how the sting of that rejection isn’t so much a sting, but a persistent throbbing, like toothache.”

Ain’t build their songs like seasons. Honouring both the calm and the storm, their lustral offerings bend toward introspective abundance and communal clarity. There’s a direct catharsis here, like a sonic sigh, that marks Ain’t as a vivid and boundless force. That force is set to continue growing as the band gear up for further live dates across autumn and winter, and plan further impending releases.