Were Teeny Lieberson the protagonist of a pulp novel, you could see the cover advertising her adventures with a slogan along the lines of: “Teeny name… big voice!” The literal namesake of TEEN doesn’t sound anything like her figurative one: Her voice is chameleonic and firmly in command, capable of twisting into a demanding growl or ringing out like the horns that often punctuate the band’s newest album, The Way and Color. It’s the fault line on top of which TEEN’s art rock dance party is built. When she rumbles, the band (comprised of sisters Lizzie and Katherine on keys and drums, and newcomer Boshra AlSaadi on bass) rumbles; when she’s calm, they ease into their open-hearted groove. It’s a powerful arrow to keep in their quiver, even if their aim isn’t always true.
The Way and Color is stuffed with chugging synthesizers, gristly bass lines, braying horns, and high harmonies layered into multi-movement suites that sometimes feel like they’ve been crafted out of the ashes of a handful of songs. Despite the commotion, there are a few songs that assemble into something thrilling. Teeny huffs and puffs and nearly collapses on “Rose 4 U” before pausing to patiently build a triumphant peroration, and while “Breathe Low & Deep”’s explicitly proggy take on R&B doesn’t snap as tightly as Dirty Projectors might, it still swells to a satisfyingly spacey outro. At the same time, the most memorable track, “Tied Up Tied Down”, is the shortest one (not counting the wispy and wholly unnecessary instrumental, “Voices”) and the most conceptually straightforward. Reviewing their debut album, Pitchfork’s Eric Harvey wrote that “a seasoned producer could strategically shave 20 minutes off the album while losing little." Here, they've at least improved to just 10 extraneous, probably cut-worthy minutes.
TEEN say they’re inspired by Erykah Badu and D’Angelo, and the songs on The Way and Color address a similar kind of sinewy, sometimes sinister sexuality where bodies don't quite know what to do with each other. But their attempt to slink around doesn’t carry the same comfort level; it sometimes sounds as though the band, while playing, is repeating a mantra of “Be cool, be cool” inside their heads, infusing everything with a level of stiffness. There’s a song called “Toi Toi Toi” that borrows its title from the opera, where “toi toi toi” is said in the same way as “break a leg.” The Liebersons come from opera stock: their late father, Peter Lieberson, was an acclaimed composer, and their late stepmother, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, was a well respected mezzo-soprano. They grew up in a musical household, and in interview have spoken about the performative quality that their parents encouraged, such as singing for people at dinner parties and acting out plays like Oklahoma!.
This background might explain their fearlessness in overpacking their songs with ideas, and you want to give them credit for ambition rather than playing it safe. And they are getting better, inch-by-inch, and if The Way and Color is not all the way there yet you can hear it as a promising document of a formative period.
