Brooklyn’s own dream-pop outfit, Teen Body, have just released Dreamo, the follow up to their debut LP Get Home Safe. The band shares some behind the scenes shots from their music video shoot for the title track as well as their commentary on each song on the album down below.
Fell Off
Shannon Lee: Loosely, this song is about feeling like a failure, falling off the ride, the drudgery of moving on. It’s pretty unusual for us to write off of a jam but things just kind of clicked. This track got started with a cool swooping riff that Bush brought into the studio one day and we all built off of.
Xela French: This was the first song we wrote for this album, and yeah, first successful group writing session post-Bush Integration Period (BIP: 2015-2016). Fun fact about this one: Marcus ghost-wrote the chorus’ vocal melody by being like, “What if the chorus went ‘la la LA la laa?’”
Act Yr Age
French: This might be a surprise, but I actually wrote this song in the middle of a Steely Dan bender. This fact may explain the vibey bass line of the verse and the slightly obtuse first instrumental break. The song manifested after just moving apartments and when my studio was not set up yet. I recall sitting on the floor singing in a falsetto I knew was meant for Shannon into a Tascam tape recorder. It’s working title was “Groove” for so long, it’s proven very difficult to not refer to it as such.
Ballad of Tomboy Jerry
SL: Shoutout to 2016 for a big mood. It’s corny, but I wrote this song angry, in between exiting a relationship with a shitty guy and then seeing one elected into office. Tomboy Jerry was an alter ego/character that had emerged from it all that embodied a lot of the bitterness I was feeling at the time. Some parts Mona from Agnès Varda’s Vagabond, but a cowgirl instead of a French runaway?
I’d had the melody and guitar parts sitting in a back pocket for months before I was finally able to articulate how I was feeling in actual words. I guess it’s still pretty elusive and vague, lyrically—French tends to be a lot more narrative and explicit when he writes. My approach has always been a little more ambient.
Marcus McDonald: The working title for this one was “Galaxie 500” lol and the demo is impeccable.
The Draag
French: This was a pretty short and simple demo I had from early 2015 when we were recording Get Home Safe. Once I brought it to the band, it went from three minutes to five and some change. We have a tendency to write what we call “second songs” where the key and vibes change slightly. I think we took the opportunity with this one to go a little bigger than we were able to on the last record, as shown in the final minute’s dual drums/guitar shreds.
Validation
French: In all defense of singles, sometimes you know you are writing a single so you keep it as simple as possible. This song came about when all I wanted for Christmas was a second Alvvays album, so it reflects the upbeat dream vibe I was steeped in at the time. As with a lot of the other songs, with this one, the lyrics and vocal melodies are a split job between Shannon and I.
Alex Bush: Dee doo, do DEE DO DEE do dee
Dreamo
French: Open tuning alert! I wrote this song, but recall being like, “are you guys sure you want to use this??” I thought it was kinda contrived and forced lol. I’m glad we went through with it though, because once the drums were in the mix it really developed this wide open feel that we only really got close to achieving on “Can’t Remember”. Speaking of “drums in the mix,” I was super stoked to put that much reverb on a snare for the record.
Dead Drop
French: So the album originally ended at “Dreamo,” making it just an EP. It wasn’t until we met Brent from Broken Circles records that we decided to tack on songs to make it a full-length. He was down to put it out, but kind of gave us a nudge to pump a little more out. Since I was doing all the production for the record I remember being like, “my god,” but in retrospect it was super fun to go into crunch time and finish two jams in a month. This was an easy pick because it was one of my more flushed out neglected demos. Marcus wrote the drums in 3 hours. What a champ.
Other Places Pt. 2
SL: This track was almost lost which is crazy because it might be one of my favorite ones off the record! French and our old guitarist Evander had written this for Get Home Safe originally but it got cut. Then we forgot how to play it having not played it for years and all we had was a crusty iPhone recording from an early practice and a few seconds from our first tour documentary.
French: The spoken track during the breakdown is a nice easter egg. During one of our tours we were on a cassette kick because Shannon’s car only had a tape deck. When we stayed at my parents house in VA we raided the ancient tape collection.
MM: We plugged the tape from French’s childhood bedroom in on the way back to NYC to discover that is was a guided meditation that his mom (shoutout to Eileen French, angel incarnate) had recorded 20(?) years ago. The beautiful tone and rhythm of her voice and the peaceful words she spoke stuck with me. When we were trying to figure out how to fill in the end of OPP2 with something it came to mind immediately. To me closing the album with something so personal, heavenly and esoteric was a perfect way to bookend the album, and the product to me feels like it ties a lot of things together. I like the idea of launching people into outer space and allowing them to wander endlessly.
You can find Teen Body on Facebook, Instagram, and Bandcamp.