Promoting their last album, ‘Feel the Sound’, Imperial Teen generously gave a free show at Origami Vinyl on Sunday afternoon, after their performance at the Satellite the night before. And since it was early in the afternoon, it was a sort of family affair, with lots of kids and even toddlers dancing in the store. It is true that their happy-bouncy rhythms with four-part youthful vocal harmonies were irresistible.
I must confess I knew about nothing about this joyous quartet – I say joyous since they were so upbeat, were joking a lot during the show, especially because Jone Stebbins and Will Schwartz kept receiving electric shots from the mic. But they formed about 16 years ago, have released 5 studio albums, toured with Hole – Roddy Bottum is also part of Faith No More which had the chance (?) to have Courtney Love for singer for a short while – so I have simply no excuse.
The four of them played a few of their poppy songs, which were diverse but shared these boy-girl harmonies with nervously excited beats and a punkish background, while switching instruments several times during the show, navigating between keyboard, guitar, bass and drums with the same exhilarating enthusiasm.
The music was so ascending with such super catchy vocal harmonies on ‘Runaway’, a song from their last album, that the cute midgets who had filled the back of the store, totally fell in love with that one, turning and turning around! But, with their haaaa-haaaas and speedy breathless rhythms, they had their own way to blur any premature idea we could make after a song: the next tune was ‘kind of a punk version’ as Will Schwartz said after playing it (yeah almost Stooges-esque), the next one had some krautrock-y elements, like ‘Over his Head’, then the next one brought some very indie-sque synth-pop breezy melodies with wobbling keyboard, or more loud retro guitars and the sexy and playful repetitive catchiness of ‘Yoo Hoo’.
It was a truly happy and playful group, constantly breaking the rules, doing whatever they wanted, Lynn Truell on drums suddenly taking Jone Stebbins’ bass, Roddy Bottum or Will Schwartz getting behind the keyboard or the guitar for a ‘punk rock morning’.
I don’t know if it is the Courtney Love connection, but their joking behavior made me think about Kurt Cobain’s favorite band, the Vaselines… ‘We have 15 more songs to play’ said Jone, ‘and a medley’ added Roddy, there was also question to cover ‘Hair’ in French,…. Yes they were funny!
I wasn’t there but saw them in SF at Noisepop.
All 5 of their records are really great. I think the first two are out of print (and oddly enough not available via Itunes or MP3 anywhere) but certainly can be found used somewhere. The first one is a 90s outside the box classic.
I would recommend checking ON or the newest one Feel The Sound, if you felt inclined to learn more. Awesome records. ON was on Amazon’s list of greatest indie rock records from a couple years ago if I remember correctly.