My Teenage Stride

Wow, I thought the first album was pretty good (although very inconsistently so), but this is just a hundred times better! The sound is a lot clearer, the songs are a lot more focused, and the overall feel is just a lot more positive. Like on the first album, the songs have a noticeable Phil Spector/60s-inspired quality to them, with hints of Jesus & Mary Chain and Dan Treacy added in. Thankfully missing are some of the garage rock and excessively noisy elements that I felt marred the first album, and in their place are just more pure and wonderful pop songs. Speaking of the first album, a couple of his earlier songs (a couple of his best ones, at that) appear on this disc, including "Penelope", which I felt was the highlight of that record. Well, on this album, it doesn't stand out as much, as there are many other songs of that caliber, including "Bleeding Saddles", "XO Freedom Rider", the Aislers Set-ish "It's Fair That You Should Follow Me" and "Carry On Cassidy", the b-side of his debut 7". I just have to say that any promises of greatness hinted at the first time around are fulfilled tenfold on this album! Highly recommended!
- Indiepages

MY TEENAGE STRIDE- MAJOR MAJOR- BECALMED- This 12 track cd is basically the work on one, guy, Jed Smith who hails from NYC (or at least he lives there now- he’s nfrom Massachusetts ). The band had a previous record on the Banazan label that I totally missed the boat on but I heard that one isn’t nearly as good as MAJOR MAJOR and it seems that Smith goes the guy-alone-in-his-bedroom route all the while taking cues from a few of his heroes (Phil Spector, Dan Treacy, Brian Wilson and maybe even some John Cale) and whips up some interesting (and damn catchy) little pop nuggets here. There’s 12 of em’ here and I can honestly say there isn’t a dog amongst the bunch. Check out the C86-isms of the great “They are Alone in their Principles” , the twinkly “Carry on Cassidy” or the peppy opener, “Bleeding Saddles.” Dunno if Banazan didn’t wanna release this or if they passed on it but some label over here should have picked up on this. I wonder if any A &R folks have gotten fired over this blunder ? If not , they should have. This is fantastic. ( www.becalmedrecords.com ) - Dagger

"Jed Smith writes and records songs the way most people breathe, except that he's amazingly good at breathing." - Vancouver Pop

This is humbling. No matter how many times I go back and check the liner notes, the fact remains true -- this big, fun, hook-filled, rowdy rock 'n' roll album was made by just one man, and it was recorded on a simple cassette four-track. There is no way you could know it by just listening; it sure sounds like a seasoned quartet, banging out tunes that burst from the speakers with cocky confidence and the kind of ramshackle glee that's usually hard for one dude in a bedroom to muster. But he did, and his name is Jedediah Smith. Though it would be easier on my insecurity to believe that he just remade the songs on a lost and found '60s mix tape, I'm going to have to face the fact that Smith made a great rock album all by his lonesome.

If you think The Strokes are indebted to old bands, wait until you hear My Teenage Stride. Smith's songs hop giddily around key points on rock history's timeline, unashamed to ape and sometimes even ambivalent about adding a "modern twist" to the various strains. Concocting a defense for his sticky-fingered songwriting would be boring and unnecessary; as long as you enjoy hearing ingeniously executed rock songs, A Sad Cloud won't cause you offense. And despite their similarities to old tunes, these aren't covers. That aforementioned "twist" might occasionally be hard to detect, but Smith really seizes these styles and makes them his own.

The low budget recording technique and vintage instruments (I'm assuming here) give A Sad Cloud a predominantly '60s feel, haunted by Phil Spector's wall of sound, not to mention grungy wax slabs by bands like The Animals and The Small Faces. Opener "Penelope" is a criminally catchy track layered with bells, piano, galloping drums and Smith's ever-present fuzzy guitar. Both in tone and in the lyrics ("Billy Shears" is mentioned), "Hamburg" addresses the Beatles' slick-haired early days honing their craft in German pubs, while the similarly rollicking "American Car" bops like the similarly '60s-indebted Ramones.

"Light in August" cleverly nods to Roy Orbison, ("Only the bored can know the way I feel tonight"), as a quiet synthesizer provides a rare breath of modern technology (circa 1970 or so) amid the crackling vocals and hard-panned vintage guitars. Mixing things up a bit, "A Sad Cloud" and "Worst Gig in the Sun" play like tributes to the early days of noisy art rock, the latter in particular sounding like a Velvet Underground and Nico leftover.

Clearly, Smith's "guess the reference" songwriting style makes a music reviewer's job as easy (and fun!) as Mad Libs, and I thank him for that. If you're thinking, "Okay, but what about the actual content of his music," you've got it all wrong; My Teenage Stride's music is like that of thousands of bands past and present -- the checkpoints are the content. A Sad Cloud succeeds because it's highly rock 'n' roll-literate and tons of fun all at once.

-- Justin Stewart - Splendid

by Kevin J. Elliott
Brooklyn’s My Teenage Stride inhabits a subculture that is perhaps the most maligned in all of indie rock: the heart-on-sleeve torchbearers of forgotten pastel pop. While metal is permitted the freedom to be ironic, house music is allowed to incorporate disco-balled indulgences, and trad-rock posers are given the go-ahead to rep the Velvets without a hint of actual religious devotion, any band tagged as twee or fey (that doesn’t boast a membership over five) is cast an embarrassing chuckle and swiftly relegated into the endless parade of rainy-day misanthropes, heads hung in accordance to their bleach-skinned heroes. Some probably latch onto support groups and message boards aimed to help such retro-minded introverts cope with the millennial backlash. Rare examples like Jedediah Smith, the principle mope behind Ears Like Golden Bats, remain unapologetic and continue crooning in faux-accents, talking to their pristine record collections like imaginary friends.

Throughout Ears Like Golden Bats Smith sings quite confidently (an anomaly for the genre), if not already comfortably jaded, knowing inevitably that any reviewer worth his/her weight in obscure Flying Nun singles will be hard-pressed not to point out (at least 20 or so) of his most glaring influences. So, let’s indulge him for a moment: the soft-hued, prismatic guitar jangle of the Chills butts up against the jerky rhythms and nervous energies of Josef K and Orange Juice on “Actor’s Colony,” or in laymen’s terms, “To Live and Die in the Airport Lounge” intertwines the Smiths’ swiftly strummed melodies with New Order’s cinematic and propulsive basslines.

That confidence Smith possesses, at times, becomes boundless optimism, a refreshing contrast to the overwhelming melancholy that surrounds his songwriting. The mellatronic swirls and sublime keyboard tones of “The Genie of New Jersey” and increased tempos that give the impression songs like “Terror Bends” and “Chock’s Rally” are careening towards a welcomed edge provide a balance of mood, rather than a shake-up. Regardless of continuity, there’s a certain dalliance (the Wedding Present allusion is necessary) that, more often than not, forgives Smith’s obvious mid-‘80s love affair.

Sonically Ears Like Golden Bats forgoes any modern convenience: the album’s main offender is also its most charming surprise. Where others will search for the unattainable resonance of weathering cloudy forecasts and sun-flecked walks in the meadow, with buckets of reverb and clichéd effects from the era, My Teenage Stride sound naturally of the era. Even the most refined fan could be fooled into thinking this was recorded 20 years ago by some overlooked, second-tier outfit from Glasgow, Dunedin, or Leeds.

Take issue with My Teenage Stride (or not) for practicing the highest form of flattery—pop is not pop without quality songs and Ears Like Golden Bats is overflowing with them. Then again, this is a genre, and an album, that can only be critiqued subjectively by taking into consideration the beholder’s threshold for sugar, one’s adoration for certain scenes from John Hughes movies, and a total disregard to the current pulse of the indie underground. Unfashionable as the record may be, it’s a constant joy to listen to.
- Stylus Magazine

by J. Edward Keyes
It's been said that great art is born of great pain. Sometimes it's the pain that comes to a poet, when he learns his lover is a liar. Sometimes it's the pain of the ambitious artist, when reach woefully exceeds grasp. And sometimes it's the pain that comes to a 15-year-old boy, when he's strapped to the wing of a grounded biplane and forced to pick cucumbers with his bare hands.

"It was horrible," recalls Jed Smith, lead vocalist and sole songwriter for the Brooklyn group My Teenage Stride. "It was my first job. The thing most people don't realize about cucumber plants is that they've got prickles all over them. By the end of the day, your hands are bright red." For most people, that kind of sustained physical torture would easily constitute the lowest point on a professional resumé. Smith has a lower one, though. "I worked for an accountancy firm once. That was pretty horrible, too."

There are no cucumbers or quadratics on Ears Like Golden Bats, the sublime new record from My Teenage Stride, but there's enough despair, depression and dislocation to make up the difference. The album isn't even one minute old when Smith sighs "There's something in us all that only wants to die" and just nine songs later he's bellowing "So what if I'm heartless?/ So what if I'm cruel?" It's enough to make Sylvia Plath look like a motivational speaker.

"I'm not cynical, it's just easier to write like that," Smith laughs. We're in a rustic lunch spot in Brooklyn's Williamsburg neighborhood, and Smith is trying to surmount the formidable difficulty of answering and eating at the same time. Within minutes it becomes painfully clear that the hamburger is going to lose. "You don't need to find ways to deal with your positivity, you just get to enjoy it. It's your negativity that needs an outlet. Plus, I think you almost have to write melancholy lyrics with music like this. It's part of a grand tradition."

Judging by Golden Bats, "music like this" is the kind that snatches the best bits of classic Antipodean bands like the Chills, the Bats, David Kilgour and the Go-Betweens and re-combines them in canny, charming ways. It's one of the year's most thrilling surprises, an album that wraps wry gallows humor in glistening guitars and whistling synths. At a time when dwindling attention spans have turned the record industry into a singles bar, Smith has written an album with nary a forgettable minute.

Blame it on his heritage. Smith grew up in the rural Western Massachusetts town of Colrain, in a house surrounded by music. "My grandmother was a stride piano player, Jelly Roll Morton-style," he explains. "She almost went professional, but because she was a woman in the '20s I don't think she felt she'd be able to go all the way with it. My mom started singing jazz after she turned 40, and my dad had an incredible record collection." He began writing songs of his own ("kind of pathologically," he laughs) when he was still in grade school, and as a teenager he created a fake compilation of made-up bands in which he assumed a different guise genre for every song. "I had all these bands that were sub-varieties of psych and bubblegum, and then I realized 'Wow, this is great, except that the singer always sounds like me, so who do I think I'm fooling?'"

Rather than try to perpetuate the illusion, Smith decided to take one of the names from that compilation — "the worst one," he admits — and dedicate himself to establishing a focused persona. The first two MTS outings had charming moments (the dour "Jesus Will Never Let Me Down" from A Sad Cloud is one) but it's Golden Bats where Smith's knack for elegant pop with a heavy heart is fully displayed.

Though its loaded with golden moments, the standout is the grim, propulsive "Reversal," where Smith blatantly swipes the structure of the Chills' "Pink Frost" and speeds it up to create a harried, jittery doppleganger. "I remember hearing 'Pink Frost' and thinking 'I've never heard anything like this,'" he says. "I wanted to take that same song and create a concise version of it." It was a gutsy move, but "Reversal" works because it sounds more like an homage than a mimeograph. The rest of the record skews along similar musical lines: "To Live & Die in the Airport Lounge" is a majestic, Murmur-ing tangle of chords, the title track bounces a rubbery bassline across a bed of synths and "Depression Kicks" boasts a guitar line that would make Barney Sumner go green. Golden Bats offers the right kind of familiarity — it's a record that builds on rather than steals from.

"Pop music is all about synthesizing a number of different elements and making your own thing out of it," Smith says. "With a couple of exceptions, people who claim to be completely original often don’t write very memorable songs." It's a bold statement, a little bit brassy and a little bit confrontational. But then, writing memorable songs is not a problem Smith has to worry about.
- Emusic

As impressed as I was with the band's second album, "Major Major" (which made my top five of 2005), this one is somehow even better! Why these guys are not more famous in the indiepop world is a mystery to me, as almost every song on this album is a hit! On their third album, the songs seem to display a wider variety of influences, and though these are often instantly transparent (sometimes even blatant), none of the songs come off as imitations. While I can see some folks raising eyebrows at songs like "That Should Stand For Something" (which comes awfully close to the Jesus And Mary Chain's "Never Understand" in the verse) and "Reversal" (practically a sped-up version of the Chills' "Pink Frost"), I see these as more of an homage than a ripoff - besides, originality is overrated, anyways... Other points of reference throughout the record include classics like the Television Personalities, Aztec Camera, the Smiths, Orange Juice and even the Wedding Present (check out the guitar in "Terror Bends"). There's a slightly darker feel on a number of the songs, but never enough to drag the record down or make it feel too heavy - even the ones where it's most noticeable, like "Genie Of New Jersey" or "Ruin", have enough melody to keep them peppy. A fun record through and through! MTQ=14/14 (March 19,2007)
- IndiePages

Shimmering guitar-pop throwback.
by Chad Grischow

March 7, 2007 - The brainchild of singer-songwriter Jedediah Smith, My Teenage Stride's sound has grown up on a strict diet of mid-80s guitar-pop fuelled John Hughes film soundtracks, with side dishes of The Smiths and Roxy Music. The happy-go-lucky guitar-pop sound may seem at odds with Smith's late album affinity with The Smiths, but both "Heartless & Cruel" and "Ruin" feel more like Morrisey turning his scowl upside-down than a cheap knockoff.

The lean songs breeze in, rustle about for two-minutes, and are gone; making the three-minute "Depression Kicks" feel like an epic. Frantic rambling "That Should Stand For Something" and cheerful keyboard and shiny riff infused "Reception" kick the album off as short-fused pop powder kegs. The hook-happy tunes would stick in your head for hours, if not immediately followed by equally catchy ones. Glistening danceable pop-rock, "To Live And Die In The Airport Lounge" sounds as though it should accompany a montage in The Breakfast Club, with its up-tempo clanging beat and twittering guitars.

While the music is always glistening and bright, the same is not true of Smith's vocals. The further from the melodic tones of earlier tunes, the more off-putting the songs get. The off-key vocals of twittering "Reversal" and droll monotone vocals of the otherwise brilliantly paranoid "Chock's Rally" derails them quickly. A bundle of electric riffs and tension, "Terror Bends" starts as a gorgeous Echo & The Bunnymen spin-off before loosing its way in a tangled chorus; although the sparkling guitar hook is irresistible nonetheless.

Ears Like Golden Bats is the kind of tight, shimmering brand of guitar-pop that time forgot. Sparkling melodic here-and-gone pop gems like these make you crank up your radio for the glorious nostalgia of the sound. My Teenage Stride deftly captures what made the mid-80s such a wistful and pleasing musical era.
- IGN

Jedediah Smith is the Brooklyn-based songwriter behind the band My Teenage Stride, and listening to the band's third full-length, Ears Like Golden Bats, you have to wonder just how much time he's spent obsessing over the Trouser Press; Ears wears its influences like one-inch pins bearing the logos of Orange Juice and the Go-Betweens. We've been especially charmed by the haunting "Reversal" (think of what would happen if the Chills' "Pink Frost" were turned upside down) and the manic, pogo-worthy "Chock's Rally":
- Idolator

by Jennifer Kelly
A soft jangle of guitars, a hazy, New Zealand production sheen, the gently melancholy yet sort of humorous lyrics had me thinking I’d stumbled onto some lost Flying Nun outtake the first few times I heard “To Live and Die in the Airport Lounge.” That’s not a knock. The tune has the airy appeal of a good Bats song, seemingly ephemeral but sticking relentlessly in that brain compartment reserved for good pop. It’s just one of several really great songs on this third album from Massachusetts-based My Teenage Stride (the album was recorded just down the road from me in Shelburne Falls), and while some of them have the green pulse of New Zealand, others will remind you of XTC, the Smiths and the dBs. The title track is flat-out gorgeous, starting in washes of pastel sound, then gathering a jittery 1980s new wave angst. Guitars are staccato but soft and there’s an echoing grandeur to Jedediah Smith’s vocals that places you squarely in English Beat territory. Later, “Heartless and Cruel,” with its upbeat-stabbing guitars and drama-laden singing, evokes Morrissey at his late 1980s best, and the keyboard laced “We’ll Meet at Emilys” bounds along effervescently as any Crowded House anthem. This is wonderful stuff, as easy to listen to as it is hard to make. Don’t think about it too hard or you’ll miss the appeal of this hammock-lazing, summer-day record...just the thing for splendidly unhurried afternoons. - Pop Matters