Skipping Around & Playin' Dumb: Tchotchke Return With An Instant Classic
- Josh Kitchen
- Sep 4, 2025
- 6 min read
By: Josh Kitchen / September 4, 2025
"Let you explain how the world’s gone insane / And all the while, roll my eyes, hide my smile," Tchotchke slyly sing on the title track that appropriately closes their second full-length album, Playin' Dumb. Anyone familiar with the three-piece, New York-based, ’60s- and ’70s-loving outfit knows that when you hear a Tchotchke song, you’re listening to a band giving you their true rock and roll spirit — what they believe and where they stand. Their 2022 self-titled debut was a burst of fresh, three-minute tongue-in-cheek Todd Rundgren and New York Dolls–flavored toe-tappers that left fans of their brand of rock revival bangers hungry for more, a modern artifact of the kind of shiny treasured trinket that explains their band name.
"This is the best representation of ourselves we’ve ever put out."
Featuring Anastasia Sanchez on vocals and drums, Eva Chambers on bass, keys, and vocals, and Emily Tooraen on guitars and vocals, Tchotchke return with an album that is riveting and fully realized - Playin' Dumb is eleven tracks full of satisfying hooks, clever songwriting, and kaleidoscopic meditations on what it means to fall in, out, and over love.
"This is the best representation of ourselves we've ever put out," Eva told me when we chatted about the record earlier this summer. The stories and soundscapes Tchotchke share on Playin' Dumb show you their souls, and any lover of the kind of music they’ve given us so far will be ecstatic to know that they keep Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys in their hearts the way Scrooge begs us all to keep Christmas in our hearts all the year at the end of A Christmas Carol. But where Scrooge had to have some hard conversations with the ghosts of his past, present, and future, on Playin' Dumb the spirits and myths that Brian Wilson cooked up over 60 years ago are alive and well, just in time for Tchotchke to pick up the torch after Wilson’s passing in June. That’s not to put a heavy musical crown on the band’s heads, but I know that if Brian Wilson had heard Playin' Dumb he’d have been as excited as the first time he heard “Be My Baby.”
The record abounds with killer guitar solos from Emily (see "Goodbye," and "Poor Girl"), impressive double-duty singing and drumming from Anastasia, (the "Did You Hear?" drumming is furious), and a bass rhythm humming along from Eva that keeps the record moving at a bounding pace (see "Other Boys." Emily even takes lead vocal (her first Tchotchke lead, she tells me) on the bright and airy “Skipping Around,” a spiritual successor to “Jolene,” with the singer warning any would-be man stealers to back off. Elsewhere, on the chilled-out “Now I Love You,” the brothers D’Addario lend fabulous piano string plucking, and on the ’60s girl group–inspired “Kisses,” Anastasia sings with a Kate Bush–like vocal timbre where you can imagine just what face she’s making as she’s expecting to be called her prospective beau’s girl — complete with kissing sound effects and playful “muahs.”
As on their first record, The Lemon Twigs are here again, producing and lending their similarly Beach Boys/Byrds/Rundgren/Jeff Lynne–inspired ears and support to the record’s 11 tracks. But Playin' Dumb is all Tchotchke. Emily told me, "It feels like we’ve been living in this world for so long, and now it’s exciting to share it with others." Unlike their first record, which they recorded during COVID, for Playin' Dumb the band was prepared with a plan. "For this second one, going into the studio we had everything written and recorded ahead of time," Anastasia said.
"This time we were very disciplined. We called it ‘Tchotchke Boot Camp.’"
And Tchotchke did indeed pull up their boots ("Those are no kitten heels!," Anastasia joked), working nine to fives so they could afford to create the sort of album they knew they'd always wanted to make. Anastasia said, "We had to grow up real fast and worked our asses off and made money so we could go on these tours and really worked for everything we got. And, I mean, it's really been paying off." The band also had to work around the Twigs’ busy schedule to get the album done. Anastasia told me, "It took about a year because we had to work around their touring. We went to Europe with them, which was great, but recording was very structured — they’re here for a week, we’ve got these days." That led to some tight production across the album. Where the first record was recorded as they wrote it, Playin' Dumb was more intentional and planned out. Anastasia told me, "For this second one, going into the studio we had everything written and recorded ahead of time, unlike the first album."
"We came in with demos and arrangements so they [The Lemon Twigs] didn’t have to do extra work — just record." - Anastasia
This maturation not only comes in the execution and songwriting, but in how the band is creating a vision of themselves to share with the world. "This new album has so much more of our personalities in it than the last one. It feels really good to have an authentic representation of how we want it to sound and look. We really went all in on this album," Eva says. What’s so impressive in this leap from debut to sophomore album is just how drastically the band has arrived there — Playin' Dumb feels like a career high point for any band, let alone a sophomore effort.
The title track shares the same kind of warmth and swelling arrangements the Beach Boys were laying out in the mid-’60s; it recalls “Different Drum” by Linda Ronstadt and her Stone Poneys, as well as great Beach Boys tracks like “Let Him Run Wild,” “The Little Girl I Once Knew,” and highlights from Pet Sounds. It plucks along in a way that would make Mike Love fret over ditching the formula. It’s impressive stuff and leaves the listener in disbelief this music didn’t come out 50 years ago. On the second single released ahead of the album, “Poor Girl,” the band gives an even more familiar tribute to Wilson with its catchy Hammond organ line that carries throughout, immediately recalling “California Girls.” "When we posted it we were like, R.I.P. Brian, this one's for you! It's so obvious who inspired the song, Eva says. “Poor Girl” was written around fictionalized villainous versions of the band, and the video, directed by Kaila Chambers and Hilla Eden, is a blast, with each member playing fictional “bad” versions of themselves. [Check out my deeper dive into "Poor Girls" from June] "We didn’t intend to write about ourselves, but rather characters that fit the ‘Poor Girl’ mold — not poor financially, but like, ‘poor baby,’" Emily said.
The album opens with “The Game,” which lays out the theme of the record. The Playin' Dumb album cover actually features a board game the band made up themselves. Eva told me, "We thought about calling it ‘Tchotchke II,’ but then the board game idea came up. The more we wrote, the more it made sense — each song has its own little world, so we created a playable game with cards tied to the songs." It’s a fun and clever way to bring the listener into Tchotchke’s world. That world is vibrant and invites you into the dreamlike fantasy that Tchotchke enjoys playing in.
In their latest music video for the title track, directed by Ambar Navarro, that world is one where the women of Tchotchke are in a push and pull between the pretend “dumb” versions of themselves and the versions where they hold the real power over their Ken-doll male counterparts. (The video is full of Ken dolls, with clever perspective shots bringing the viewer into Tchotchke's technicolor world.) Where Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys’ idea of women were bikini-clad fantasies with Coca-Cola spilled on their blouses, Tchotchke are having the last laugh, cleverly situating themselves as some of Wilson and the California rock scene’s most exciting heirs.
Playin' Dumb comes at a time where people are in desperate need of the kind of light and joy that can only be found in a three minute pop song - and Tchocthke more than deliver.
"Everything is so heavy all the time, we might as well bring some light,"
Anastasia explains. Eva offers, "Everyone needs like the instant satisfaction of a bubble gum, poppy, girly song. And Emily adds, "It's very exciting - I feel like this is the world that we've lived in for a long time, and now it feels really good to get it out to other people. Hopefully it brings them some form of joy or happiness," with Anastasia quick to add, "As much as it brought us!"
Playin' Dumb is out September 5. Listen to the title track below and follow Tchotchke here!
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