The Teenagers live!

The Teenagers
Dark Wave Disco At Sonoteque, Chicago
Saturday, January 26, 2008

There’s a good chance a group whose most notorious song is a document of the narrator sleeping with his step-cousin shouldn’t be taken too seriously. Perhaps that should’ve been the first indication of what was to come.

Synth-heavy French electro outfit The Teenagers touched down for their first ever Chicago appearance over the weekend, performing a set midway through Saturday night’s Dark Wave Disco monthly at Sonoteque. The result was a mixed experiment: a frenzied, haphazard experiment that at best was cheesy french electro (better translated for stage with guitars, bass, and a live drummer) that didn’t take itself too seriously. At worst, the trio-led Teenagers were a loose, disjointed, intoxicated train-wreck.

The primary example of which was unfortunately the night’s most anticipated moment, the psuedo-incestious (and aforementioned) hook-up tale, “Homecoming.” Easily the most remarkable moment on The Teens’ Reality Check (Merok) debut, it instead stood as a mess of drunken fangirls at the mic for the female responses in the song’s storyline. A novel-enough idea, but poorly executed, in part due to the level of intoxication between the female audience members, and in part because they didn’t know all the words. The venue’s unfavorable acoustics didn’t help, as sound got lost and muddled along the way.

That’s not to imply there weren’t elements of the night that succeeded. Frontman Quentin Delafon stood as the focal point of the rushed performance, sporting a goofy grin throughout the majority of the set, engaging the crowd with frequent visits into it, and a tangible sense of excitement. There was no doubt he was enjoying the tone of the evening, and, judging by the reaction from the over-eager crowd practically spilling onto the low stage on the north end of Sonoteque, he wasn’t the only one.

They hinted at it on “Homecoming” and throughout Reaility Check, and Saturday night cemented the fact The Teenagers know how to have fun, especially onstage. It’s possible if they took their fun a little more seriously, it could do a world of good.

— Jaime de’Medici

Category: Live Reviews, Weekly