Gabriel Gutierrez’s Self-Titled Album Signals Growth, Not a Pivot

Gabriel Gutierrez has been building the world of Smileswithteeth for thirteen years, a stretch that now frames the Los Angeles project’s self-titled album as a kind of artistic coming-of-age. The record arrives with a restlessness that makes sense for a teenager. It is not a clean break from the past, but a deliberate expansion of it.

The opening run offers the clearest bridge. “19999” stirs with the static of a dial searching for a signal, a preface to the album’s first single “Radio Feel Better.” When the disco beat locks in, there’s a Daft Punk shimmer, a lean toward crossover that Gutierrez handles with more structural awareness than nostalgia. A child’s voice delivers the title phrase, echoing the innocence that surfaced on earlier work like “Roomies.”

The middle stretch grows more fragmented and interesting. On “vocstl,” bubbling synth and lapping waves compose an ambient centerpiece free of percussive urgency. That aquatic calm returns elsewhere—a wave crashes through the instrumental “川,” and water washes into the second minute of “Black Sea.” These are not mere interludes. They shape the album’s deeper texture, a space where electronic production breathes as naturally as field recordings.

Vocals surface sparingly but register when they do. “So Clear” buries them in the mix. ~trinity~ pushes “Running Out of Time” toward indietronica with rapid percussion and stuttering lines, and “POV” channels the brief, precise partnership of The Postal Service. “I Could Never” introduces guitar, a subtle warning shot that becomes a full-scale detour on “Bleeding Out in the Valley.” That track arrives like a signal from another project entirely—distorted, lo-fi rock—and its placement can feel jarring. But the closer “HFMB” folds the distortion back into Smileswithteeth’s established sound, bridging the two impulses.

Gutierrez has always worked like a radio fan chasing foreign frequencies late at night. On this album, the dial spins a little faster. The question of whether Smileswithteeth leans pop or electronic misses the point. The record seems to be growing a new set of teeth, and for now, that growth is the story.