TEEN support love
The joy-pop quartet get ambitious on their third offering — and pull it off with poised grace.
Photo credit: Hannah Whitaker
Brooklyn-based quartet TEEN escaped the murky confines of its beloved borough to navigate a third full-length, Love Yes. Lead singer and multi-instrumentalist Teeny Lieberson initially holed up in a remote lakeside cabin in Kentucky, taking those quiet moments and their resonating inspiration back to the city, then to Nova Scotia where the rest of the band joined to record. The artists set up camp laying down tracks at Old Confidence Lodge, ironic in its setting, in the Lieberson sisters’ (Lizzie on keys and vocals, Katherine on drums) hometown of Riverport, Nova Scotia.
Love Yes, which dropped last month via TEEN’s longtime label Carpark Records, amps up sonic ambition. “Another Man’s Woman” dazzles with its percussive intricacies, building a sturdy stage to showcase the vocal lattice of Teeny, Lizzie, and bassist Boshra Al-Saadi’s combined vocal efforts. “Animal” builds a slow, careful cacophony accented by the group’s saccharine vocal harmonies. Choppy gets a charming makeover in “Superhuman,” a track remarkable in its frenetic, unique cadence along with streetlight horns and Lizzie’s mirthful synth work.
Although TEEN did a fair bit of geographical bouncing during Love Yes’ cultivation, its final entity smacks of the members’ Brooklyn home, perhaps best captured in the video for “Free Time,” directed by and starring Becca Kauffman of fellow BK outfit Ava Luna. The footage nods to the weird beauty of “1980s public access television performances of R. Stevie Moore,” Kauffman told Stereogum. The colors look like a Trek Matthews painting and I want to live inside of this video.