Asbury Park is an ever-changing city and scene. Since 2000, the city has gone from a cityscape of broken dreams and boarded up storefronts to the hippest secret in the United States, to a place where punk rock kids and artistic dreamers swerve through a crowd city-by-the-sea crammed with high-rises, flash cars and patrons who wouldn’t have been caught dead there no more than five years ago.
Yet no matter how many high-rises are built, how much the culture changes or if we’re all forced to stay at home — the music of this city and scene will always be its lifeblood.
One of the pillars of this scene for the past decade has been Dentist. The indie pop trio has been at the forefront of the scene — you can always find them on a bill somewhere, playing to a crowded house, absolutely mesmerizing everyone within earshot. In 2022, the band not only dropped an excellent new album, Making a Scene, they will be representing the Asbury Park community along with other great local acts (Lost in Society, The Vansaders) at the 2022 Sea.Hear.Now Music Festival. Frankly, you could not ask for a band that represents Asbury Park better right now. The band’s beautiful of hip city indie rock and effervescent beachfront surf rock creates an unforgettable sonic tapestry that perfectly embodies the true spirit of Asbury Park.
Recently we caught up with the band to talk about Making a Scene and how it was a very different record pre-pandemic, the Asbury scene, Sea.Hear.Now and so much more.
In the press release for Making a Scene, the band stated due to the pandemic the album “wound up with different songs and a different album than we should have otherwise?” Can you go into further explanation as to why this is the case?
We were on an entirely different timeline before the pandemic. Our initial plan was to release an album in 2020. We had songs, some of which ended up being on the album, but a lot of the songs that made the album ended up getting written during quarantine, and it’s very unlikely that we would’ve ended up with the same songs had circumstances been different. I think we ultimately ended up taking our time more and ended up with a better result.
Which song from the album do you think captures the new direction you went through on the record and why?
I think if you listened to all of our other albums, the songs that would stick out on the new album as a new direction might be “New Dress” or “Spilled Coffee.” We definitely captured something in the studio with those two that we haven’t captured before, but we kind of feel that way about the whole album.
The band’s been performing as Dentist since 2013 — when you look back at your history, how do you feel the band has grown sonically and lyrically? Also, is there anything you look back at and laugh and say “Well, that was certainly something that we tried?”
We’re not a band that wants to dramatically change our sound from album to album, but that being said, we do try to keep getting better at what we do and this album probably sounds the biggest and most polished so far. To answer your question, though, I don’t think we ever look back at our old stuff and are like, “I can’t believe we tried that,” because we’re still working in the same genre more or less, but we have grown lyrically I think. We have a song from the first album where the lyric is “you”re not like batman, you’re more like crap man.” There isn’t anything like that on this album.
For anyone heading out to Sea.Hear.Now and is interested in checking you out for the first time — what is a song of yours that you would recommend they pre-game with in order to understand the vibe of Dentist?
-Here’s a song from each album: “Bird in the Cage,” “Meet You There (In Delaware),” “Night Swimming,” and “Check the Calendar.” If you only have time for one, go for the newest, Check the Calendar.
Will this be the largest performance you’ve ever been involved in? If so, how do you feel heading into the weekend?
Yes, this is probably the largest performance we’ve ever been a part of. To be on the same festival as Green Day is pretty crazy, we all grew up with them.
After your set is done, whose set are you looking forward to checking out?
Green Day
Dentist has been a staple of the Asbury Park scene since it first started in 2013. Can you talk about how the Asbury Park scene has changed for the good and the bad since you started nearly 10 years ago?
There are definitely a lot more bands doing a variety of different things at this point, which is great. When we first started, the scene was much more singer songwriter, jam band or straight ahead rock oriented, so we were outliers at the time.
What is it that you love about being in this band?
We all love playing live, but being in a band also gives you the opportunity to meet a lot of great people. We have friends all over the country from touring and most people we hang out with in the area are in bands.
What are you most excited for — outside of Sea.Hear.Now — for the future of Dentist?
After releasing a new record we just want to focus on playing shows and getting our music in front of people, so we’re excited for all of our upcoming shows and playing outside of New Jersey in the fall.
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