The Teenagers
Reality Check
(XL Recordings)
London-based French pop trio the Teenagers are capable of turning out a good song. The trouble is that song is reworked 12 different ways on their debut album, the latest in the line of average indie-pop dressed up as nu-rave.
The basic recipe works: guitars, drum machine, rising dance rhythms and adolescent lyrics about sex and swearing. But there is so little sophistication about the Teenagers, from the novice musicianship to the shallow themes and artless lyrics. There is a song about a holiday romance, Homecoming, a dual narrative where she's in love and he's in lust; another about infatuation, Scarlett Johansson; and one on youth violence, Streets of Paris.
Unlike better modern-day lyricists such as the Streets' Mike Skinner, there is no real or humorous insight into modern life as teenagers, unless these lives are as empty as the songs here.