Many years ago in Portland, childhood friends Adam Wallace and Jason Miller were capturing their dance routines to Technotronic’s “Pump Up the Jam” and other MTV hits of the age on a VHS camcorder, hoping “to get on Star Search or something. We were too young to know that you had to send the tape out,” guitarist Adam recalls with a laugh.
Meanwhile, thousands of miles away in Hamburg, Germany, Adam’s future wife and bandmate, Karolina, was practicing singing along to Madonna and Paula Abdul, searching for her own stardom. “Little me was literally asking any cousin, friend, or anybody to do dances with me, fashion shows, anything in entertainment,” she chuckles.
And somehow, in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, these three found themselves transplanted to Los Angeles (routing the Wallaces, both former fashion models, through New York City, and bassist/keyboardist Miller, formerly of psych-rockers Lumerians, through Northern California), where they formed the experimental darkwave trio Chalk Teeth — with frontwoman Karolina singing exclusively in Polish.
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Sitting at Studio City’s Licorice Pizza Records, where Chalk Teeth are celebrating the white vinyl release of their self-titled debut album (apparently they wanted “bone-colored” vinyl, but white was as close as they could get), Karolina reflects on her upbringing and how it has influenced Chalk Teeth’s multicultural, wanderlusty sound. “I was born in Poland, and then my parents escaped the communist Poland at the time, so there’s a little bit of that Iron Curtain. I was 3 and a half, but even being so small, I do remember that journey — the feeling of being in a new country, not understanding the language, and then staying in that country,” she says. “Because it was Communist times, it was sold [to me by my parents] as a ‘vacation.’ Also, kids will go on and talk a lot, so it was very dangerous, probably, to tell your kid at the time that you’re actually moving.
“This meant my parents closed their door with two kids and two suitcases and never went back,” she continues wistfully. “Pretty early on I was like, ‘Soooo… are we going back?’ And then you just realize you’re not going back. And I had to learn the [German] language, one of many that I speak now, but we spoke Polish at home. And still to this day, whenever I talk to my parents, we speak Polish.”
Initially, Karolina considered singing Chalk Teeth’s songs in German, but Adam and Jason suggested she try Polish instead. “What happened was something completely magical,” she marveled. “I dove in and found the words, just started rewriting poetry or just even in my mind. I started thinking about my roots, and everything started to really gel together and become the thing it is now. I love expressing myself in my actual first language. … It’s unlocking so much, the very first memories of who I am and where I come from. I’ve done a big global journey in my life, so it’s really beautiful to come back to it and touch base.”
Karolina was only 15 when she uprooted her life again, leaving Germany to pursue modeling. “I hit the world pretty young. It didn’t seem to me that I was that young, but now I look at 15-year-olds at I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh,’” she gasps. “It’s pretty wild, now that I think about it. I definitely had more wits than I even understood at the time to come out of it and be on this side of life. And not that many bad things happened. Yes, I’ve had some, of course — you’re being thrown into a world of grownups that will try to take advantage of you — but overall, I always loved going to new places, exploring cultures and music… immersing myself into a whole new world. I would just absorb it all. And then when I came to New York, I was just like, ‘This is my spot! Yes! You’re my people!’”
It was in New York City that Karolina met her person. Like Karolina, Adam had bounced around all over the map — Oregon, New Jersey, Indiana, Nebraska, Idaho; he’d even played college baseball in Toledo — before his own modeling career swept him from Detroit to the Big Apple. The year was 2002, that glorious, indie-sleazy Meet Me in the Bathroom era when the Strokes were rock’s great new hope and East Coast legends like Lou Reed and Ric Ocasek were frequently spotted on the LES streets.
“But me coming from Germany, of course, I was looking for the house clubs,” Karolina laughs. “I’m like, ‘Where’s the house music?’ Where’s the techno?’ At that time, the No. 1 club was Exit. Junior Vasquez was the resident DJ there, and it was on fire. I just don’t know how I got in there, but I did!”
However, it was at the East Village’s world-famous Rivington Guitars that Karolina purchased her first guitar — and then, there was no turning back. Her relationship with Adam started off as platonic, then became romantic (they eventually got engaged in 2009, and married in 2011), but as Karolina learned guitar, it became professional, with the couple forming psych-trance duo Radiant Reveries before Jason later joined them in Chalk Teeth.
Chalk Teeth’s Jason Miller, Karolina Wallace, and Adam Wallace (photo: Angela Izzo)
“We were like, ‘Let’s just dive in and get out there and experience this and learn as we go and figure it out,’” Adam explains. “I feel like it definitely is good for our relationship, because we’re getting to be creative and fulfilled. And getting to do that together is pretty special.”
Despite Karolina’s above-mentioned adoration of New York, right in the middle the pandemic, in October 2020, the Wallaces’ wanderlust stirred again. “All of a sudden, I felt something — and I usually only do things when I really feel them — very emotional, very in tune. And Adam felt it too. We’re like, ‘Yes, we’re going to be some of these people that are going to make a pandemic move!’” The couple sold almost everything they owned, packed up their remaining books, records, rugs, clothes, and musical instruments (including, of course, Karolina’s treasured first guitar), and headed west. Meanwhile, after Lumerians “sort of imploded,” Jason and his wife decided to make their own move from Oakland. And it was in L.A. that Adam and Jason reconnected, setting up shop in their own North Hollywood studio.
There, Chalk Teeth formed, workshopping a sound that had little in common with the aforementioned Technotronic or Paula Abdul, although Karolina’s love for darker, “Frozen”-era Madonna crept into the mix, along with German influences like Kraftwerk, Conny Plank, and various Krautrock artists; some Eastern European folklore; and Adam and Jason’s inspirations like Suicide, Patrick Cowley, and Coil. “We had a pretty cohesive shared aesthetic of what we want [the music] to be,” Jason says.
The result was a mix of synthpop, noise-rock, hardcore, and psych that band members amusingly describe as “chalky,” which they shaped through 20-plus-minute improvisational jams in their NoHo bunker. (“Believe it or not, actually the length of those tracks is kind of short for us!” Karolina laughs, when it’s pointed out that almost all of the songs on Chalk Teeth’s debut LP are about six minutes long.) And interestingly, at first there were no plans for the songs to have any vocals or lyrics, in any language.
“I think our first [instrumental] show was entirely improvised,” Jason recalls.
“And I think we played two songs!” Adam laughs.
“It was very cool and trippy,” Karolina says of Chalk Teeth’s second-ever gig — which, in an oh-so-L.A. manner that seems like a scene straight out of either Less Than Zero or Spinal Tap, took place at a private pool party in “a friend’s giant birdcage,” where the band nearly got electrocuted but thankfully survived. “That show was probably one hour, because we did three tracks, and each was 20 minutes.”
Chalk Teeth remain fiercely independent — they wrote, recorded, and mixed their debut album in their own studio, and released it on their own imprint, DNTL Records — so there’s little chance of them putting out three-minute, English-language pop singles in the future. But their music is a bit more digestible now. There’s even one album track that clocks in at a reasonable 4:34, and at their Licorice Pizza show, they manage to fit in six tunes. However, given all of these star-searchers’ worldly influences and wild ambitions, Chalk Teeth still features a sprawling, often unclassifiable sound, one that’s almost impossible to contain on just two sides of bone-colored vinyl.
“We don’t have any interest in recreating exactly a copy of anything,” Jason asserts. “We’re not trying to sound like anything. It’s very what comes out naturally [during our jam sessions]… and then we try to whittle it down to about 5 percent of what it was!”
“I actually love that we went about things how we did, because it did give us the time, the actual luxury to develop it and really bring something out that we fully believe in, something that’s quality, that’s authentically us, and not compromising anything,” Karolina proclaims. “We know immediately if something feels chalky or not.”
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