What's your fantasy?...
I’m standing outside a crowded Lexington and I’m feeling apprehensive. Like so many synth acts I’ve seen in the past, Teengirl Fantasy could go either way. The pair could be awesome or, alternatively, the cacophony of beats and loop pedals could be so far away from any form of organic sound that any real sense of the emotion created on their debut '7AM' will be killed stone dead.
On record, Teengirl Fantasy make dancefloor-friendly tracks that are wholly viable on the indie blogosphere. Not that indie in the traditional sense means anything anymore. If you’d asked me eighteen months ago I wouldn’t even have thought to recommend bands like this to anyone but the strange people you see in the jazz section of HMV, but since everything made in 2010 felt like some kind of hangover from Animal Collective’s 'Merriweather Post Pavilion' it seems natural that crossover acts have been appearing like weeds on both sides of the pond.
After what seems like an age of setting up and the repeated playing of drum patterns (resulting in a lot of questioning faces pondering whether or not they had actually started) the duo finally take to the stage (but not before we've listened to a DJ playing hip hop for what seems like an eternity). They start off somewhat more low key than I'd expected them to be live, manipulating the low end in much the same way as on record. 'Vibes' has the crowd swaying, fixated on the stage with hypnotic stares as the pair build a set with dream-wave that is loose, fluid and alive.
Much of Teengirls' music seems to encompass a certain nostalgia, which perhaps explains the concept behind their name and the tongue in cheek blog they've become infamous for. Throughout the course of the set they spew out references to '80s hip hop, disco, acid house and a whole host of other genres which fight to break out from underneath the framework of pulsating beats and subdued yet soaring synth lines.
'Dancing in Motion' becomes more stripped back with the absence of sometime !!! collaborator and vocalist Shannon Funchess, but is rather let down by the lack of its usual drum-pad rhythm. No matter how many times Nick Weiss stares to the back of the room pointing to the sky, we never do get to hear his addition, and the track peters out with the synth line echoing pretty much to itself.
The pair are undoubtedly at their best when playing their genre-trashing four-to-the-floor passages. Just as I begin to ponder that the set needs something more to really bring it to life, we hear the opening lines of 'Cheaters'. I always hate to be the one that waits until the 'hit' (in 'Cheaters' TF wrote a track so good that I'm still baffled as to how it was missed off so many tracks of 2010 lists), but it does really take until this moment for the set to truly captivate the crowd. All of the band's ethereal qualities seem to come into their own, and over the course of the following three tracks, which include an incongruous re-imagining of '70s classic 'Love Don't Live Here Anymore', the crowd are pretty much rocking. I think I even witnessed a few hands in the air down towards the front.
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