Teen - Good Fruit

It is still a mystery to us why TEEN (I don't usually indulge artist's typographical affectations--I'm looking at you Tuneyards--but I will make an exception for TEEN, such is their music's affect on me) isn't one of the biggest bands in the world. Not only do they have a sound that would seamlessly on any Top 40 radio station, or any commercial alternative station, but their songs have melodic hooks and a lyrical depth that is rare in this day and age.

To put it bluntly, we find their music incredibly beautiful and moving. It fills us with a simultaneously shock of joy and sadness that is not unlike confronting the sublimity and power of being alive. Think standing on an ocean, contemplating the vastness of existence while looking down and pondering the Fibonacci embedded in the contours of a shell.

It's also fun. You can dance to it.2016's Love Yes has been played in our house since it came out (we found the vinyl in the clearance bin at our local record store half off for about $10).

This one might be even better. It's certainly sadder, more desperate, filled with a longing that we've all experienced at some time or another. I guess I'm trying to say that I feel a healing power in this music (I am trying harder, when I write about music, to not be afraid of being sentimental; I want to rely less on the pseudo-objective proof of quoting lyrics, of using analysis as a way of "making a case;" I am trying harder to share). Here's my favorite song so far. It embodies the humor, the weirdness, the fierce intelligence, the musical brilliance, the insight, the unexpected tears, that is the music of TEEN.


I don't know what you're doing today, but if you're in a place where you can listen to music, I'm embedding the bandcamp link here. You can listen to the whole goddamn album. Tell me I'm wrong. Tell me I'm right. Tell the world what you hear when you listen to TEEN. Tell the world what you feel when you listen to TEEN.



SIDEBAR ABOUT MUSIC CRIT INSIDE BASEBALL STUFF THAT IS KIND OF A DIGRESSION FROM THE MAIN POINT OF THIS ARTICLE, I.E. HOW MUCH WE LIKE THE NEW TEEN ALBUM:

The Guardian gave it three stars today--out of five, because in a universe of infinite stars, most music publications insist five is the highest number of stars imaginable. This is both a metaphor and also literally true. The reviewer wrote that Good Fruit is "stronger on detail than as a unified structure or statement." To which, I say well isn't everything. It's 2019, and you want unity and structure. But then most contemporary music scribblers resemble professors handing out grades more than humans navigating their responses to art, and so they evaluate from on high, longing for some kind of outdated apollonian ideal. We live in chaotic times, times that are, if I may be so bold to suggest, stronger on detail than as a unified structure or statement. But then navigating this post-structural hypermodern era successfully means being able to think on your feet. It requires elasticity and a spirit of play. Children do this effortlessly. And most young people today, who have grown up or come of age under these conditions, are especially adept. But the only young people who get hired to write about music in the visible places are all middle-class, middle-brow, and write like they are middle-aged.