The new self-titled album from Stourbridge, England's AMOEBA TEEN in an album replica sleeve with a fold-out mini-poster.
AMOEBA TEEN (Stourbridge, UK)
When speaking of a band like Stourbridge, England's AMOEBA TEEN as they manifest themselves today, it's difficult not to fall back on clichés like "going from strength to strength", "at the height of their powers", or "firing on all cylinders". It's better, perhaps, to borrow a song title from the group themselves and say that they're coming on stronger: 2022 sees their return after a three-year absence, even more powerful than when they left off with the acclaimed MEDIUM WAVE in 2019. Their new self-titled album AMOEBA TEEN is their strongest set yet, a diverse set of songs touching on glam, new wave, Americana and naturally their finely honed Britpop roots. It's been heralded by the singles "January" and "New Material World", and is certain to thrill longtime followers and those new to the band alike upon its April 22 release through Big Stir Records.
Amoeba Teen were founded by critically acclaimed songwriting team of Mark Britton and Mike Turner. Armed with a four-track tape recorder and junk shop guitars, the pair began writing together back in the dying embers of the last century. With a rag-tag collection of scratchy demos, they slowly honed their craft, melding together lush harmonies, hooky melodies, the odd sample and overdriven guitars. Hints of power pop can be heard -- Teenage Fanclub, Jellyfish and Big Star spring to mind -- but Turner’s raucous guitar and reverb soundscapes keeps the vibe punky and a little dirtier.
By 2016 the group had built upon Britton and Turner’s songwriting foundations, adding Simon Muttit, legendary former bassist of Fierce Panda Records' darlings, X>Y. On drums is Carl Baylis, whose percussive skills have found him featured on Steve Lamacq’s record of the week on BBC 6Music. The chemistry of that lineup has proved enduring, and forms the cornerstone of Amoeba Teen's reputation as a terrific and fiery live unit. The band's 2017 album The Appleyard Sessions was an acoustic detour that hinted at their hidden alt-country influences, while retaining their hallmark harmonies and melodic hooks, and Medium Wave, their debut as Big Stir Record's first UK act, showed them truly coming into their own, with the album's lead single "Suit and Tie" seeing a debut on BBC 6Music.
Three years and one pandemic later, the band have returned with AMOEBA TEEN, and an exciting new approach. “It's a deliberately self-titled album because it was a real band effort to capture the live performance and shape the subsequent arrangements and vocal harmonies,” the band explains. “It has been a labour of love over two disrupted years - trying to rehearse the songs and then being forced to wait due to COVID lockdowns.” The intentional collision of the live sound and the diversity of the new material is a thrilling masterstroke, lending both immediacy and cohesion to the exploration of new textures. Sonically, melodically, lyrically, and thematically, Amoeba Teen’s self-titled album raises the band’s bar and is intended to be worth the wait fans have had to endure. The wait ends soon.
Big Stir Records is very proud to announce the April 22 release of the new and self-titled album from Stourbridge, England's AMOEBA TEEN on CD and digital. The followup to their acclaimed 2019 BSR release Medium Wave, Amoeba Teen features ten fresh new tracks including the single “New Material World” and the early-2022 teaser “January”, each
Big Stir Records is very proud to announce the April 22 release of the new and self-titled album from Stourbridge, England's AMOEBA TEEN on CD and digital. The followup to their acclaimed 2019 BSR release Medium Wave, Amoeba Teen features ten fresh new tracks including the single “New Material World” and the early-2022 teaser “January”, each bristling with energy and discovery as the band charts new territory with all their keen Britpop instincts on full display. It's up for pre-order at www.bigstirrecords.com and everywhere music is sold, and will be streaming worldwide on the street date. The band – singer/guitarists MARK BRITTON and MIKE TURNER, drummer CARL BAYLISS and bassist SIMON MUTTITT – provide some insight into what to expect on AMOEBA TEEN: “This album is the first one where we’ve recorded live as a four-piece, capturing the energy of the band performance Amoeba Teen are famed for.” The album was produced by Sean Lloyd – whom the band cite as instrumental in developing the Amoeba Teen sound into new sonic territories – at Claptrap Studios in Stourbridge, and mastered by George Shilling (Teenage Fanclub, Primal Scream). “It was a deliberately self-titled album because it was a real band effort to capture the live performance and shape the subsequent arrangements and vocal harmonies,” the band explains. “It has been a labour of love over two disrupted years - trying to rehearse the songs and then being forced to wait due to COVID lockdowns.”
The intentional collision of the live sound and the diversity of the new material is a thrilling masterstroke, lending both immediacy and cohesion to the exploration of new textures. There's a strong thread of gleeful glam rock running through the album, from the lead track “Mainstream” (which counts among its memorable couplets “She likes it kinda kooky in the back of her Suzuki”) to the driving “Barlight Crawl”. It's even evident on the swaggering instrumental passage that breaks up the melancholy of “Putting The Kids Through College,” and it rears up again in the closing “King Of The Cut” -- a stomping tune tinged by the tones of Crazy Horse and Teenage Fanclub at their heaviest. Elsewhere, Amoeba Teen's always-deft way with power pop hooks manifests itself in the single “New Material World” – a new-wave inflected hit-in-waiting that equally evokes The Cars and The Replacements – and “Just Not That Into You” which straddles the line between the sounds of Squeeze and Fountains Of Wayne at tops of their respective games. There's a palpable joy in the way the band dive into fresh idioms while sounding exactly like themselves: the rootsy twang of “January”, the single that heralded the forthcoming album earlier this year, is as natural as it is new. Likewise the near-'50s balladry of “A Good Reason Why” and the Zombies-like shuffle “Melody Told You” fit Amoeba Teen like a second skin. Lead vocal duties are traded between Britton and Turner, both displaying melodic gifts and wry but touching wit that bring to mind the likes of Split Enz (on the jangly “Monica Wake Up”), Blur, Jellyfish and even The Beach Boys in the sophisticated harmony passages adorning tunes across the record's span. “The album touches on the perennial classic pop themes of love and loss, exacerbated by the breakdown of Mark Britton’s marriage. Additionally one of the tracks (that shall remain nameless) was written using artificial intelligence - an experiment that was too intriguing not to try once. But ultimately we wanted to write a kick-ass album that people could turn their car stereos up and enjoy during those first hints of summer. That is why bass player, Simon Muttitt’s painted canvas cover uses bright splashes of colour to capture the fun mood of the festival season we all hope to enjoy together again soon.”
Sonically, melodically, lyrically, and thematically, Amoeba Teen’s self-titled album raises the band’s bar and is intended to be worth the wait fans have had to endure. The wait ends in April, and the record they've crafted will delight devotees and those newly discovering the band alike.
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Mainstream 5:020:00/5:02
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0:00/3:43
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New Material World 3:330:00/3:33
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A Good Reason Why 3:550:00/3:55
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January 4:310:00/4:31
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Barlight Crawl 4:100:00/4:10
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Melody Told You 2:240:00/2:24
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Monica Wake Up 2:290:00/2:29
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0:00/3:43
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King Of The Cut 5:310:00/5:31
Medium Wave
Amoeba Teen
The new album from Amoeba Teen charts a band contemplating middle age, the middle class, and a comfortably numb life among middle Englanders. MEDIUM WAVE resurrects the band’s classic pop instincts, set in the midst of a mid-life crisis that challenges the genre’s lyrical formula to which power pop aficionados are accustomed.
Like the album’s
The new album from Amoeba Teen charts a band contemplating middle age, the middle class, and a comfortably numb life among middle Englanders. MEDIUM WAVE resurrects the band’s classic pop instincts, set in the midst of a mid-life crisis that challenges the genre’s lyrical formula to which power pop aficionados are accustomed.
Like the album’s title, Amoeba Teen looks back longingly to a previous radio era, as they survey an inner and outer world in flux and old physical certainties giving way to digital white noise. But there’s also a different kind of medium they seek, calling on the spirit and wisdom of Chris Bell, John Lennon and Harry Nilsson.
Oscar Wilde once remarked, “The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything.” The album’s starter Clementine, a mid-tempo folky waltz underscores Wilde’s insight, with a sneering cynicism as, outsiders, Britton and Turner, ‘lift the lid on the cackling crush’. Defiantly, they ask the masses to come outside and embrace the cold. The agenda couldn’t be more explicit: this a band unwilling to succumb to the mainstream.
After a hypnotic conclusion to the album’s opener, we’re thrust into Babycakes, a jaunty Beach Boys-esque number that features stabbing horns. Here Britton contemplates the novelty and excitement of an emotionally unstable ‘drama queen’ versus the ‘steady-as-she-goes’ contentment of the familiar. This is a theme the album flirts with later on in the string-laden Wandering Bullets, where forgiveness is sought while reminding the listener of everyday addictions we all quietly lean on to get through the day. In other words, don’t be so quick to judge.
Suit and Tie delivers on the raucous up-tempo rock n roll that Amoeba Teen are known for; performed live and mastered at the world famous Abbey Road studios. Yet even among the crunchy guitars and bass, Turner draws our attention to a man trapped in middle management. Britton and Bayliss join in on catchy choral harmonies, in sympathy rather than mockery at the man’s predicament.
Hickory Hill turns left towards alt-country territory, where we are taken on a sunny day stroll. But not everything is plain sailing. For there is another place – beyond Britton’s reach – that he won’t ever get to in this life. In acknowledging his own mortality and also surrendering to his inadequacies Britton acquiesces, with a simple request to scatter his ashes in a world he never lived in. Rather than straying into a morbid tale, the song offers the listener a heart-warming story of someone finding quiet contentment with what they’ve been given.
Another wave washes over us in Ship To Shore, as Turner and Britton warn us that the fog’s coming down and that the Black Dog is never far away. Lyrical abstractions give way to a reminder that even ‘the greatest navigators got blinded by the sun’.
Medium Wave is an album for the everyman standing at their crossroads. It’s an album for those in the middle who continue to enjoy ‘the shock of the new’ but have a growing sentimentality for yesteryear. This is the sound of a band that is learning to appreciate the good in the present while sleeping with one eye open. And in doing so, Amoeba Teen continue to subvert the power pop genre, yet never straying far from a strong hook and catchy melody.
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Clementine 5:030:00/5:03
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Babycakes 3:390:00/3:39
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(Coming On) Stronger 3:170:00/3:17
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0:00/3:46
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Wandering Bullets 3:120:00/3:12
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Half Time 0:450:00/0:45
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Suit and Tie 2:310:00/2:31
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Ship to Shore 3:530:00/3:53
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Hickory Hill 3:440:00/3:44
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Everybody Wants 3:320:00/3:32
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Save 4:580:00/4:58