The Top 30 Albums of 2008: # 25

The Teenagers
Reality Check

Did you know that critics were divided over The Teenagers?  They are, apparently.  They can't tell if it's a question of "style over substance", they can't decide if something should be done--what, who knows, water-boarding maybe--about the possible mysogynistic content of some of their songs, and everybody is just in a tizzy and figures they better play it safe.

Safe-playing--ah, the last vestige of writing-for-profit rears its head.  Thankfully, this is the internet, where high-minded individuals can publish unverified papers on economics, host websites strictly for neo-nazi lunatics, and get Australians arrested for the easily findable images of Bart fucking Marge.  See, here's the thing about The Teenagers:  this shit is offensive as hell.  It opens with a duet--a pitchy young American woman explaining how she "loved my English romance" while her male partner coos back in a guttural mumble "I fucked my American cunt."  When she invites him "to Cancun, you know, for Spring Break!" he responds that he'll "think about it" (he won't) not really buying, as she puts it, that "It could be great."  Then it's chorus time, which means the singers say "cunt" a lot.

Here's the thing about these guys--and yes, they are all guys--this ain't a throwaway gag for one song.  They ride this "sleazy dudes banging dumb American girls who talk about their myspace pages" for the full tilt.  Like Pulp's This Is Hardcore; Reality Check is one of those rarely done blatant odes to being a skinny white guy who likes drinking, drugs, and using women to his own ends.  In other words, it's not much different from bad gangster rap--after all, these Frenchmen are "speaking to their own experience" of being a mildly successful indie-pop band that can hook up with groupies after shows, they clearly know what it's like to get drunk and be idiots, and they like to snicker at the sound of profanity.  They might be grown-ups, but they aren't men, and they're reveling in it.  Yes, it's offensive.  But it's still really catchy, funny shit, and it doesn't wear out its welcome the way most joke music does.  It's an odd world where white guys still think they need music to trump up their bad choices--despite finally losing an American presidential election, it's pretty clear to anybody that being a white guy is still a good way to luck into shit you don't deserve to have, and it's a far simpler route to getting out of trouble than the one that a Muslim gets.  But hey, these dudes are French.  That pretty much absolves them of moral choice, if I'm reading the newspaper correctly.

It's not that hard to come up with something like The Teenagers--tons of bands have flirted with silly lyrics laced with surprising obscenity, getting that kick that comes out of sounding like a goofy Britpop band but shocking your audience with a chorus like "She left with the sunlight, I cried 'til the moonlight, That Fucking Bitch Deserves To Die."  (Actually, that song--"Sunset Beach"--might just be the strongest on the album, sheerly because it climaxes with a head-in-a-box type shocker that throws the entire lyrics even farther into "these guys are assholes" hilarity, when it's revealed why he's so upset with his one-night-stand partner.)  The reason The Teenagers work--and work they do--is a simpler one:  this shit is twisted musical theater by way of the Arab Strap, and if there's one way to make musical theater appeal to any jaded music fan, it's to make sure the vocalists sound as much as humanly possible like Aidan Moffat, at least until Aidan Moffat quits fucking around with poetry.  Hearing a grumbly, low-pitched pixy man saying all kinds of bizarrely hateful shit to girls who remind you, post-sex, "to send me a friend request?" That's not what all music should be about.  But it is what some music should be about--after all, it's a hell of a lot more honest than a whiny young man warbling about how much how it's "our god-forsaken right to be loved loved loved loved loved."

Bitch, please.  Ya'll gonna make me fuck up and puke.

-Tucker Stone, 2008

Comments

[Sam/RaptorAvatar]

Thank you for nailing what I love about this record. It's not really a classic (in fact, I don't think I've really even heard the thing in it's entirity) but it's definiteley a blast and has more staying power than anything would lead you to assume. Their interview with HRO is pretty funny as well.