Teenage Faces Hearts in Transit LP
A full-sized serving of fun, earnest, catchy power pop. It’s apparent right from the jump that TEENAGE FACES have an ear for this style, even beyond just wearing their influences on their sleeves. I assumed their namesake was an EXPLODING HEARTS reference before I clocked the tracklist containing three cover songs—one from Portland’s finest, one NERVES track, and the third tackling Elvis Costello’s “Welcome to the Working Week.” These covers are done well and are clearly little love letters to the genre. The originals that make up the meat of the record probably won’t surprise the listener at this point, but again, they make for a great little listen. Those originals skew a little more early ’80s power pop, with a bit more emphasis on the pop than the power, and the vocals sound like they could be your coworker, or your cousin, or the bank teller, but I think that adds to the charm here. I’ve spent most of my life obsessing over this music and I see it like pizza. There’s no such thing as bad pizza.