"Hey, have you heard of this guy Teen Daze?" This is how a friend began an iChat conversation with me late last year and, short answer, "no." A longer answer would've been one that was likely shared by just about anyone keeping up with prevailing internet trends ca. November 2011: "No, I haven't. But do I really need to actually hear Teen Daze to know exactly what it sounds like?” The answer to that question was likely "no" as well, since if you go to the young British Columbian's watercolor-splashed Bandcamp page, you could find EPs with titles such as *My Bedroom Floor, Four More Years *and, I shit you not, Beach Dreams. His description of Four More Years includes the following phrases: "chillwave," "glo-fi," "falling asleep on the beach," "reverb-drenched," "summer vibes." Fast forward to Teen Daze's debut LP, All of Us, Together, arriving on the same label that brought you Psychic Chasms and The Year of Hibernation, and it's clear that his fervor has not waned: Note songs with titles like "Brooklyn Sunburn", "The New Balearic", and "Cold Sand". It's like Fraser Valley's cable providers allowed Teen Daze's Jamison to view the past three years of internet discourse with a snark-eliminating firewall.
Add it all up, and although Teen Daze is clearly the kind of guy who might say Memory Cassette changed his life with a straight face, his sincerity could disarm a nuclear warhead. Can you really accuse someone of opportunism when he's knowingly dressed to the nines for a party that ended at least a year ago? Look, I remember hearing this stuff start to bubble up and thinking, "*finally…*someone's doing that," and there have been plenty of great records to come from this subgenre. And can you knock a dude who for all intents and purposes comes off like chillwave's answer to the Darkness? You simply can't have that much enthusiasm about a specific artistic aesthetic and be cynical at the same time.
Though Jamison is intent on claiming to be a dance producer, it's actually helpful to view All of Us, Together within the frame of rock music. Typically, when electronic artists are likened to rock bands, it's something like Justice or Skrillex, acts that incorporate the hard, fast, and loud corndogging aspects of guitar music. But Jamison's compositional method is more along the lines of Real Estate, forthrightly melodic, unfussy, and wholly uncomplicated. These are basslines that could easily be tapped by a beginner familiarizing himself with root-note patterns. The steady 4/4 beats inch close to disco, and it doesn't sound like he went too far into his presets to select the drum sounds. The arpeggios could likely be slowed down to half speed and unpacked as open chords and ringing Strat leads. He even prefers flange and phaser effects above all else.
Jamison's intent is that All of Us, Together will inspire real life enactment of its title, but music that packs dance floors has an emotional or sonic ambition that alludes to social interaction inherently being a risky thing-- the music of Teen Daze is not, and it's hardly a total slight to say this is music meant for more meditative pursuits. It's too agile, perky, and sober to really be likened to chillwave and whether it's rangier numbers like six-minute opener "Treten" or more condensed near-pop like "The Future", everything amicably ambles along in the most agreeable way possible-- I've found it to be a good companion while walking to pick up a specific item or two at Trader Joe's, knowing exactly what I'm getting and knowing that the price never changes.
Which ultimately brings us back to where we started: odds are, you absolutely know what to expect from All of Us, Together and frankly, the actual quality of the record is less of a factor than your interest in what it brings to the table. But towards the end of All of Us, Together, you get the impression that Jamison's still learning on the job and might want to consider a name change. At times, it sounds far less like his beloved Boys of Summer 2009 so much as a simplified homage to Kompakt's more populist acts, electronic's version of a neophyte performing solo acoustic versions of Zeppelin or Radiohead at a college bar. The reverb trailing off the rigid snare hits imply the patiently-building "For Body and Kenzie" and "The Future" were created in the image of Gui Boratto's "Beautiful Life" and "Erbstück" pretty much never happens if the Field doesn't. Granted, he doesn't sound like he has nearly enough finesse as a producer to pull any of that stuff off right now, but it does nonetheless give All of Us, Together a distinct personality outside of being a guileless late adapter with more gusto than technique: if you ever wanted to commemorate the sound of your little brother discovering Pop Ambient for the first time, here you go.
