Feel the Sound, Imperial Teen’s fifth album in a sixteen year career, finds them stretching beyond their well-established safety zone. By no means a failure, it’s unfortunately the band’s least successful LP.
Much has been made of Imperial Teen’s seeming disinterest in modifying their music to reflect recent developments in indie-rock, but I tend to think this observation has always been somewhat overblown. And it mainly seems to come up due to the time-honored template of the band’s sound, a defiantly straightforward strain of pop-rock conversant with punk but smitten with the innate catchiness of pre-crap commercial radio.
If Imperial Teen’s agenda has always been a straightforward one, it bears noting the band has made an admirable amount of progress over the years, at least from within the confines of their specialty. They debuted with the fairly big alt-rock splash of 1996’s Seasick, an affair nicely split between sunny-day power-pop and post-Pixies heavy melodicism, the kind of record that would make a nifty graduation present for that Weezer-loving cousin. ‘98’s What is Not to Love basically reinforced this sensibility while dodging the sophomore slump, but it was with 2002’s On that Imperial Teen gave their music its first big shake-up, producing what will likely be considered the band’s high water mark.
Bolder in production, stronger in songwriting, brilliantly percussive and adroitly integrating keyboards and more dynamic/less boilerplate guitar attack into the scheme of things, On signified the best kind maturity. And 2007’s The Hair the TV the Baby & the Band brought that maturity into middle-age while keeping any dissonance with the music’s youthful bona fides to a minimum.
Feel the Sound is immediately recognizable as Imperial Teen while also marking the band’s boldest progression since On. However, the strides it documents are often unsatisfying. Any inherent traces of punk spirit have almost entirely been erased from the equation, which in itself is far from a crime. Imperial Teen was never a band that leaned too heavily on punk precedent anyway, but their first two records did vibrate with the energy of the style as filtered through a young and sincere rediscovery of hooks for hook’s sake. And their connection to punk was in no way a matter of conjecture. Guitarist/vocalist Roddy Bottum was an inaugural member of Faith No More and bassist/vocalist Jone Stebbins was in The Wrecks with drummer/vocalist Lynn Truell (née Perko), herself a former contributor to one of the USA’s wildest punk outfits The Dicks.
If On was more adult, it still managed to retain its loose ties to Bomp Records and the regenerative possibilities of long-gone Top 40 radio. The Hair the TV the Baby & the Band began the transition away from traceable punk pedigree, but it still possessed a spark that ultimately proved successful as Imperial Teen navigated through the final stages of growing up.
And it’s this spark that’s too often missing from Feel the Sound, a record that’s as reliant on their by now signature catchy songwriting as ever. Sadly, many of the tunes simply lack the instrumental drive Imperial Teen long summoned to bring them across. Things start promisingly enough with the swell of percolating harmonizing that is “Runaway” and continue with the head-bobbing shuffle of “No Matter What You Say,” but the dynamic shifts in “Last to Know” feel telegraphed, like an attempt to diversify a mid-tempo keyboard plod a band like Spoon would’ve kicked to the curb.
To be clear, Imperial Teen are a band whose songwriting has never really entered the echelon of the truly exceptional; what’s made them so refreshing in the past was how they elevated their very good if kinda no-big-deal tunes with infusions of edge, smarts and verve. Feel the Sound still possesses the smarts, and the edginess does occasionally assert itself. It’s the verve that’s so crucially absent.
In the past Imperial Teen have gestured toward ‘80s pop sensibilities without negative side-effects, but here “Over His Head” feels like an undercooked slice of femme-voiced radio fodder. In the hands of The New Pornographers say, this sort of throwback move can produce grand results, but “Over His Head” just falls short of the mark. It’s in no way a terrible song, in fact starting with a nice bit of Krautrock motorik that dissipates all too quickly. This rhythmic motif returns as the bedrock of the next track, the boldly techno-poppy “Hanging About”, one of the Feel the Sound’s better cuts, featuring well-employed keyboard and synths that make it a bold break from Imperial Teen’s heretofore guitar based (if not dominated) mode of operation.
This sea-change is continued with the very Pet Shop Boys-like “All the Same.” While (again) far from a bad song, it only amplifies Feel the Sound’s deficiencies, for time has proven Tennant and Lowe to be truly singular songwriters with a talent well suited for the smooth veneer of dance-pop. While certainly high-quality tunesmiths Imperial Teen simply aren’t in the Pet Shop Boy’s league; to restate, they’ve previously made a low-key career out of elevating strong songs via the frictions and tensions of rock execution, elements synth-pop generally side-steps in favor of momentum and stamina, and it’s an ill fit for Imperial Teen’s strengths, making “All the Same” feel very average.
This sense of the average comes to dominate Feel the Sound. “Out From Inside” bites Prince-like moves and adds an overbearing chorus to shoulder-shrugging effect. At 3:20, “Hibernates” actually feels stretched for about a minute too long. And with more firepower and gutsier vocals “It’s You” might’ve scored, but instead it settles for splitting the difference between well mannered and sassy. But in the plus column “Don’t Know How You Do It” does graft a somewhat power-poppy structure onto a (gasp) fairly up to date indie sound. And closer “Overtaken” further subverts the idea that Imperial Teen are deliberately stuck in a songwriting holding-pattern, insinuating that the band has kept an ear open to indie-pop’s progressions over the last decade or so.
After ample consideration, Feel the Sound’s eleven cuts end up providing a nice handful of songs worthy of their previous material, a batch of tracks that would’ve formed a fine EP. And it’s tempting to chalk this effort up as a nice try, but the reality is that it took them five years to complete this album. Hopefully they can get back on course without as long a wait.
Graded on a Curve: C
