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Reality Check

by

The Teenagers

 
Reality Check
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Avg: 3.5 (85 ratings)

For those who like their superficially cute pop music smart, satirical and packed full of painful lyrical barbs.

  • We Say...

    Review by Garry Mullholland

    It begins with one of the most disturbing pop singles of the last year. "Homecoming," a fuzzy two-chord blend of Velvets jangle and mellow electro-pop, is Grease's "Summer Nights" with the gloss removed and the gloves off. A male-female duet, much of it spoken rather than sung, it features a French rocker guy (who insists he's English) and an American cheerleader girl talking to us about their holiday romance. The singalong chorus sees the guy brag: "I fucked my American cunt," while the girl swoons: "I loved my English romance." The apparent misogyny is pulled up short at the end, as the pair make their polite farewells: "Don't forget to send me a friend request," the girl says chirpily, making the MySpace reference drip with a sense of "I've forgotten you already." That's the teenage sex game, same as it ever was.

    The Teenagers are Quentin Delafon (vocals), Dorian Dumont (guitars/synths) and Michael Szpiner (bass), and none of them are teenagers. They are also quintessentially Parisian, but exiled in east London. And their indie trio is less a band, and more of a wry performance art project about the mores, language and desires of the western teen reared on Beverly Hills 90210, binge-drinking, reality show angst and swearing (this album possibly has the highest musical "fuck" count since the second Eminem album). Their basic sound is familiar to anyone who's bought an indie record in the last two years — thrashy, sub-Thurston Moore guitar, analog synths, disco-ish drums and all together now for the chorus. The twelve short, sharp songs take a definite, pop-art, Ramones/B-52's-style delight in being virtually identical. But, like the best art-pop minimalists, the Teenagers are good enough at melodies to make every tune sound like a separate potential hit single.

    The band's mordant humour isn't just aimed at the outside world. "Feeling Better," with its echoes of the Wannadies (in fact, everything on Reality Check sounds like a gnarlier take on the '90s Swedish power-popsters) and "New Order" is an ode to the band themselves, which cuts right to the meat of what every new band really longs to say to their adoring fans: "And if you need a band/ 'Cos you wanna dance/ Or missing a friend/ 'Cos you don't have any… well… we don't care!/ Just buy our t-shirts and talk about us everywhere!" Cultural references abound throughout Reality Check, with Scarlett Johansson, Orlando Bloom, Jared Leto and Shannon Doherty all making appearances. No country is more hostile to Hollywood's domination of global culture than France, and Delafon's sly purloining of California teen-speak treads the satirists' line between celebration and critique.

    But behind the irony is a genuine longing. As they recall being chased by a gang of tough boys on the "Streets of Paris," Delafon tells the story with more excited nostalgia than bitterness or fear. The subtext to Reality Check is that our teenage years — in all their chaos and confusion — are the best of our lives, and the Teenagers jangle in a fey indie manner because they wish they hadn't had to grow up. This sadness balances the cynicism perfectly, and pulls the record out of contrived fashion band territory and into somewhere real and relevant.

    Whether Reality Check finds favour with anyone who isn't a snotty sixteen-year-old hedonist (or a style mag journalist) probably depends on how many of us can admit that our basic gender loathings, cultural prejudices and self-obsessions don't really change as we mature — we just learn to stop saying them out loud. But if you like your superficially cute pop music smart, satirical and packed full of painful lyrical barbs, then this is one reality check you'll be delighted to receive.

  • They Say...

    Review by Tim Sendra, All Music Guide

    On their debut album Reality Check it quickly becomes clear that there are three things French trio the Teenagers firmly disbelieve in: subtlety, propriety, and variety. Let's break them down one at a time. Their sound is filled with clattering drums and drum machines, clanging guitars and huge choruses with shouted hooks. Like a raunchy (and very French) stadium rock band in miniature, they kick up a lot of noise and never stray from being completely obvious at all times. So far, no problems. Since some of the best rock & roll is completely unsubtle and obvious; we can't mark the Teenagers down for that. As for propriety, even for raunchy French pop, there are lines reasonable people wouldn't want to cross. Just kidding! Anything goes in French pop and the Teenagers make sure they make the most of it as they happily touch on having relations with step-cousins ("Homecoming"), lusting after Scarlett Johansson ("Starlett Johansson"), hating weird girls ("Fuck Nicole"), getting real, real mad at the girl who stole a Jazzmaster ("Sunset Beach"), and possibly worst of all, shameless self-promotion ("Feeling Better"). If you don't care about right and wrong, love mildly shocking lyrics, and despise Jeff Buckley, then you'll have no problem with the group's flaunting of decorum. The real problem with the album comes with the Teenagers' disregard for variety. Every now and then you run into an album where all the songs sound kind of the same -- sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't -- on Reality Check every song sounds exactly the same. Singer Quentin Delafon talks through a verse as the music chugs along then the chorus kicks in and the music bursts into bright, sunny hooks. Without fail and without variation, the songs stack up one after the other like pink Legos. Even though the formula is a winning one (and sounds pretty thrilling in small doses), by the end of the album you feel like you were listening to one really long song. No amount of freewheeling smut can disguise the fatal lack of variety on Reality Check.

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