TICKETS

Information from the organisers:

Mouse Teeth belts and croons spellbinding lyrics over distorted guitars that thrash then drift into celestial swells that backdrop gut-wrenching performance poetry.

Mouse Teeth is the solo project of Leicester-born musician and poet Nancy Dawkins, which was formed out of the reflective isolation of lockdown and the wisdom gained from seeing a really good therapist. After achieving minor music success as a teen (“her voice is to die for and her writing craft is phenomenal” – Dean Jackson, BBC introducing 2011), Dawkins took time away to study philosophy, recover from being a teenage girl in music, become an adult, and fall into a long period of chronic illness in which time she took up tarot. Mouse Teeth combines themes of illness, grief, abuses of power, identity with existential reflection and an ear for the magic of the world. Mouse Teeth is angry but sees hope in spirit. Mouse Teeth is sad but finds strength in not keeping quiet about it. Mouse Teeth is tired and finds peace in ritual.

Of her work, Mouse Teeth says “Reviewers often describe my music as “challenging” or “raw”, yet the response I get the most from other women and queer people is of having felt comforted, feeling solidarity; “I think you read my mind” they tell me. My music is about the strength in getting it all out, in brazen vulnerability, and the beautiful hope I find in surrendering to mystery after decades of trying to think my way out. Sometimes you need to scream and pull a card, light a candle and trust that it all means something even if you’re not sure what. If I wasn’t worried about sounding pretentious I’d call the work an epistemological experiment in letting go.”

In Mouse Teeth’s first year of creation, she played the Library Stage of Tramlines Festival and the main stage of Forgotten Futures Festival. Before even playing her first Mouse Teeth gig, she used phone recordings of her songs and came third place in the Elephant Arch Record Label artist search, judged by music legend Self Esteem aka Rebecca Lucy Taylor, and Sheffield Mayor Magid Magid. In the time since, she has played Handmade festival twice, performed at Rough Trade Nottingham for International Women’s Day, and provided support for artist’s such as Katie Malco and Charlotte Carpenter.

After her set at Peddler Market, Sheffield, Pink Wafer Mag wrote “Mouse Teeth combines
elements of grunge, art rock, and poetry. Punky and noisy one moment, subtle and spellbinding the next - Mouse Teeth is the songwriter you weren’t expecting to hear.”

Of her set supporting Saintes at a sell-out show in Sheffield, Flare Magazine wrote of Mouse
Teeth “The crunchy whir of atmospheric power chords and a voice crisp with a determined
power resonates throughout the crowd, as the intensity of piercing rhymes and sickening truths punch you in the gut... you can’t help but crave to get lost further within her mystical
atmosphere.”

Music in Leicester wrote “Mouse Teeth produces art, in a pure sense of the word – art isn’t
always cosy and sparkling; its beauty can come from elsewhere. The sense here was one of
purity of emotion” in a review of her support for Charlotte Carpenter.