Teenagers-Demo II (2013)

Teenagers wowed me pretty hard with their first demo, back in 2012. I still stand my by original, drunken assertion that it was one of the best albums of its kind last year. Crisp, clean, hyper-melodic garage about love, love and...love. I had them pegged as falling somewhere on the Beach Boys side of the Beach Boys/Troggs split as far as neo-60s pop goes. You know the difference: music you can play in the car with your parents when you're home for the holidays, vs. ugly, nasty, lewd tunes about premature ejaculation.

Well, on their second demo, Teenagers seem to be hopping the fence and sliding into the slime of the Troggs' turf. The basic sound is still the same: dirt-simple guitar lines, stutter-putter bum drums, a singer who's perfected the art of the "I'm so elegantly wasted I just don't give a damn" voice. But the band has popped a few pills, maybe had a few bad one night stands, and gotten dirtier, muddier. The guitar is fuzzier, and the mix overall got dragged through a few backalleys and dive bars before winding up on bandcamp. "Sick and Tired," the demo's closer, is their best tune yet: a riff nasty and heavy enough that they mighta stolen from The Gits.

Hopefully Teenagers will record a proper EP or LP soon and the great mystery of whether they're Troggs fans or Beach Boys fans will be clarified. In the meantime, check out this demo.

Teenagers-demo CS (2012)

Warsaw's Teenagers blew me away with their two-song demo in December. This, consisting of those same two songs ("I want to know" and "leaving home") plus 3 new tunes, is simply rad.

I don't like to indulge in gushing about a band, but Teenagers is pretty much everything I look for in a surf pop band: short, melodic guitar lines; meaningless lyrics sung/hollered in an almost-harmonic way; and rolling drums that move like a wave.
The first two songs, "I want to know" and "leaving home" are a concise statement of Teenagers' appeal: simple and pleasureable, they're superficial in the best way possible. "All my friends are gone" almost sounds evil, prolly 'cause of the guitar tuning. "I don't care" is a put-down song in the best Nancy Sinatra tradition: dude left, fuck 'im, who cares, right? Right.

Revel in Teenagers' raditude here. Stay tuned for more info on this band, they're amazing and this demo is at the top of my list of 2012 releases (it's only January, but so what?).

*edited, 1.31.12.* Also, check out the lumberjack vibed vid for "All my friends are gone:"

Teenagers-2 song demo (2011)

Any music critic at some point has to face the arbitrariness of taste. For example, there's no essential, objective reason that I absolutely love these two songs, whereas I find Best Coast's whole catalogue offensive, and couldn't get past the schmaltzy schlock quality of Tennis' first LP.

So don't get pissy with me if you think these two songs are just more surf-garage nostalgia. They are. But there's something to them that makes Teenagers rise above the legion of bands quarrying the Phil Spector sound for all it's worth...the vocals have an open, naive quality that fits the music exactly, and the instrumentation is almost note-perfect girl-group garage: minimal guitar chords and a rollicking beat.

Teenagers is from Warsaw, a city not noted for its surf or beaches, but they've captured the California sun in musical form remarkably well here.

Winter is well upon us in the northern hemisphere, but Teenagers' demo is gonna be keeping me warm until the New Year. Check it out, here!