I’m a day late, I know, but I had Very Important Things to do yesterday. And I had trouble trying to compose this entry, because I’m pretty sure I’m about to embarrass myself terribly with my thoughts on Teen Dream, the first album of my music project.
I’ll start with my non-Google influenced thoughts. I found myself listening to the first three tracks and then being hit with a serious case of ADD. Seriously, I must have played this album upwards of 15 times last week, but as soon as it was done I couldn’t remember more than a few bars of what I just listened to. The songs made me feel like I was in one of those hazes you get when you take a little too much cough medicine – you know things are going on around you, but everything feels a little bit fuzzy and dreamy. Which is bad when you’re trying to operate a motor vehicle.
After my first listen last week I jotted down a few words that immediately came to mind – “synthetic” was right at the top of that list. Walk in the Park’s opening beat made me immediately think of those god awful pre-recorded keyboard beats in the piano labs in college at JMU.
My favorite track by far was Used to Be. It was the one track I really enjoyed the day-dreaminess of (and that’s a highly technical music term, readers). Plus the piano and drums sounded like the actual instruments. The piano on Real Love was gorgeous, but all of those sighing vocals throughout the track were just too much for me.
On Friday, I Googled the album and the band. And holy shit. The lead singer is a girl.
I actually thought my Google was broken for a second and the entire internet was playing some kind of sick joke on me. No such luck. I’m just a total and complete moron. I love a gal with a deep, husky voice (Nico’s Fairest of the Seasons might be one of my favorite songs ever), but I still can’t get over the fact that I listened to the album for an entire week thinking the lead singer would not be someone named Veronica.
In any case, there’s a chick doing vocals and the internet seems to agree it’s an indie success. The dreamy thing appears to be intentional. And no one else seemed to mistake the lead vocalist for a dude.
This is not the sort of album I would normally throw on, but hey, that’s the whole point of this little experiment.
I’m very excited about this week’s album. Check back tomorrow for the new one and the playlist! I am completely sure of the lead singer’s gender this time around, but I’m sure I’ll find some other way to completely embarrass myself.