Toothless

Toothless emerged as the solo endeavor of Ed Nash, longtime bassist with Bombay Bicycle Club, once that group entered an indefinite hiatus in 2014. Nash conceived the project simply as a means to air songs he had quietly accumulated while riding in the back of the band’s tour bus throughout the previous ten years, free of any set ambitions, and he borrowed the name from a Raymond Pettibon cartoon. Handling vocals and the majority of the instruments himself, he enlisted fellow Bombay member Suren de Saram on drums and brought in frontman Jack Steadman as co-producer; most of the sessions took place in Nash’s front room, with additional mixing supplied in part by Chris Coady, whose credits include Beach House and TV on the Radio. The first Toothless release, the understated 2016 single “Terra,” appeared online with little advance notice and centered on acoustic textures colored by folktronica. Later singles shifted toward brighter indie-pop tempos while preserving electronic accents, their titles—“Charon,” “Kairos,” “Sisyphus,” “The Sirens”—underscoring Nash’s longstanding interest in Greek mythology. Issued early in 2017 on Island Records, the debut album The Pace of the Passing included guest appearances by Tom Fleming of Wild Beasts, Marika Hackman, and the Staves.