Teenager - Thirteen

by Sarah Maybank

published: 5 / 11 / 2007

Label: Virgin
Format: CD

Dark, bu enticing debut album from new punk-electronic group Teenager whose influences include Iggy Pop, Suicide and Nine Inch Nails

Review

It’s the press release that gives it away. ‘Young and horny. Unpredictable. Loud. Drunk. Abusive in a kinda loving way. Schizophrenic,’ babbles Thirteen’s publicity blurb, with the intensity of a hormone-induced mood upswing. The fact it doesn’t mention Clearasil, fits of door-slamming or infuriated curfew negotiations with parents betrays the fact that, in truth, Teenager said goodbye to the hellish reality of puberty years ago. Still, they make the kind of music that inspires you to do dark, seedy things and no one ever grows out of that. Teenager share an attitude with - but are not to be confused with - stroppy Anglo-French outfit the Teenagers. They look skinnily, glamorously debauched in that fashion-shoot way that guarantees you coverage in the style press. And they conjoin dark, danceable synth rock a la 'White Wedding'-era Billy Idol (‘West’, ‘Alone’) with a punk-disco throb that recalls 'Idiot'-era Iggy Pop (‘Breaking Thunder/No Donor’, ‘Liquid Cement’). Thirteen offers the sinister thrills of electro-experimentalists Suicide or Nine Inch Nails minus the un-listenability factor - and it’s sufficiently out-there for a Hollywood movie exec to snort coke to and feel he’s living life on the edge, man. Meaning we’ve staked everything we own at William Hill that you’ll hear it sound-tracking nightclub-based film shootout scenes from now until, well, forever. Better deliver, Teenager, or it’s you we’ll be citing in the CCJ hearing.

Track Listing:-

1 Liquid Cement
2 West
3 Luke And Angie
4 Alone Again
5 Pony
6 Breaking Thunder (No Donor)
7 The Good Fight
8 The Secret Of My Success
9 Good Together (Italin)
10 Bound And Gagged (Mm131)
11 Stand Up
12 Sexual Revolution
13 Mr. Booze (Clotted Wood)