Reality Check by The Teenagers

4 stars

MySpace marked the beginning of many bands, and The Teenagers originally started as a MySpace joke but now survive as a French synth-pop band that is still comedic, but also ear-friendly and escalating in popularity. Reality Check, their debut album, sounds like the background music in a lounge with vivid lighting and colorfully dressed people. Besides the obvious French accents, which are noticeable due to subtly-musical speech, the album radiates mod-Euro vibes that coalesce perfectly with any cosmopolitan environment. Whenever you feel somewhat dorky or uncool, hit play on this album and it fulfills you in such a way that you feel unexplainably stylish and cool, which is the goal of most teenagers today. As aptly as the name suggests, most of the songs seemingly come from the perspective of teenagers. The album as a whole is (not unreasonably) satiric of our generation of teenagers in a pungent and politically incorrect way.

Musically, what makes The Teenagers different from other modern (and fabulous) electro-alternative bands like Metric and Le Tigre? They have a more spacey quality to their sound, the base and foundation of the music in their songs are long drawn and electronically soothing, but the vocals and the lead instruments move at a relatively quick pace in most songs. It’s an interesting and enjoyable twist. The variety of percussion provides a good environment for the short, succinct and catchy guitar riffs. The French pop sound thrown in the music makes their songs more enjoyable to sing and adds an edge that’s uncommon. While a lot of the verses consist of talkie-music, that doesn’t detract from the traditionally musical choruses and the overall musicality of the album.

The reason I picked The Teenagers for the one CD review of the blog recording our 19 days at Columbia is because embarrassingly enough, the album tends to echo a lot of the clichéd and typical teenage situations we find ourselves or people we know in. Reality Check gives us the opportunity to laugh at ourselves and groove to fluent music as well. That’s not to say their music is only targeted at teenagers

Reality check: over-listening to the same music tires easily. The Teenagers possess great sound quality, but all songs in the CD share almost the same DNA with one another, making the entire gulp of the CD rather repetitive. The songs are best listened to completely separately. Reality check: the lyrics are rough and shameless, not something you want to blast around children or parents—their lack of nuanced profanity and their choruses in general drag a little bit, but not often enough to rate the album badly. Reality Check: this album deserves to be on your mp3 player because it is unique and versatile—you can dance to it, wake up to it, and listen to it passively whenever you want. Buoyant and original, this album is worth your time and pleasure.

To listen to their music, go to their official website (http://www.theteenagers.net) or the MySpace page that started it all: http://www.myspace.com/theteenagers.