Imperial Teen

Imperial Teen

Now We Are Timeless

Merge

***IMPERIAL TEEN's releases over the past 20-plus years have been pointed and specific diaries of musical celebration, windows into the hypersensitive personal drama of relationships within the band, individual conquests and failures, and collective, aspirational hopes, dreams, and perspectives. RODDY BOTTUM, WILL SCHWARTZ, JONE STEBBINS and LYNN PERKO TRUELL—who they’ve become, how they are dealing, and what their lives are in 2019—all of this is on Imperial Teen’s Now We Are Timeless. The band wrote and recorded the new album in the cities the individual members have geographically gravitated to: New York City, the Bay Area, Denver, and Los Angeles. Themes of time and movement, averting and succumbing to crisis, dealing with loss and pain are all represented on the record, but what rings triumphant is the undeniable joy and catharsis that come from the band’s spontaneous and improvisational approach to making music together. In strict keeping with the band’s roots of creating seemingly clean, pop presentations as a springboard for dramatic themes of loneliness, triumph, suicide, success, and failure, Now We Are Timeless moves us into a realm of inevitability for the band.

Imperial Teen

Feel The Sound

Merge

***The fifth album by IMPERIAL TEEN, Feel the Sound, succeeds completely at its goal, plainly stated in the collection’s title. From the exhilarating, propulsive “Runaway,” which features the entire band on lead vocals (how many other groups can make that claim?), to the expansive final statement of “Overtaken,” RODDY BOTTUM, LYNN PERKO TRUELL, WILL SCHWARTZ and JONE STEBBINS feel the sound themselves and, in turn, make the listener feel it in ways immediate, pleasurable, and haunting. ELO-like symphonic pop has become a touchstone for everyone from Justice to Cut Copy in recent years, but Feel the Sound makes it manifest through live instrumentation that possesses a Krautrock level of intuitive synchronicity and a desert island jukebox’s sense of fun. So many bands lose momentum and focus over time, but a little past its sweet sixteenth year of existence, Imperial Teen somehow grows both younger and wiser, connecting four characters through creative friendship and deep trust, and forging a communal power that continues to grow stronger. Feel the sound of a one-of-a-kind group that’s never sounded more like itself. (STREET DATE - 1/31/2012)