Feb. 12--How do you take your caustic observations and melancholy regrets? With a little cream, perhaps? If that's your preferred mix of tonal colors, "Love Yes" (Carpark), the third album from New York-via-Nova Scotia quartet Teen, should do nicely.
The affirmation in the album title comes with a few caveats: Love is an ideal, but it's loaded with landmines. Yet the music doesn't come off as particularly gut-wrenching.
Sisters Teeny, Lizzie and Katherine Lieberson, plus bassist Boshra AlSaadi, are evolving into a first-rate art-pop band that is learning how to merge its quirks and excesses with a tauter pop sensibility.
The best tracks feel effortless even as they chafe against patriarchal privilege. "Tokyo" leads off the album with a seductive slinkiness. Teeny Lieberson's voice is multi-tracked into a choir underpinned by Lizzie Lieberson's whirring keyboards. Only a squalling synth solo hints at the nastiness in the story line about a bored husband cheating on his wife to chase after "youthful skin." "All About Us" spreads percolating keyboards over a thick bass line while dismissing a self-delusional "sensitive male." And in "Another Man's Woman," what sounds like whip cracks contrast with a choir wishing for something better.
Sometimes the editing problems that marred the previous two Teen albums undermine the flow. Four tracks end with a gratuitous sax or trumpet solo, and the cool, jazzy feel of "Please," distinguished by Katherine Lieberson's sensitive drumming, fades into a synth bubble bath that drags the song to its finish. In trying to break away from synth-pop cliche, the quartet sometimes ends up simply overdoing the songs.
Yet the band's mastery of contrasting textures remains impressive (versatile rhythm section, a chameleon-like keyboardist), and Teeny Lieberson's voice meets every challenge, whether riding the percussive "Noise Shift" or melting into her inner Enya on the sparse piano-led ballad "Push." With each release, she and her bandmates have gotten better at focusing their ambitions, and "Love Yes" affirms that upward trend.
Greg Kot is a Tribune Newspapers critic.
greg@gregkot.com
'Love Yes'
Teen
3 stars
