Toronto post-punk mainstays TEENANGER find an optimism on their sixth outing

A fixture of the Toronto music scene for the last thirteen years, Teenanger’s sound has entered a stylistic twilight zone on recent outings. Lacking the overt new wave predilection of its predecessor, Good Time is found bookended in a malleable middle-ground between the former’s pop sensibility and the harder-edged DIY tenor of their first four albums. Rendered with Melissa Ball’s boundless vocal energy, this eight-track affair presents the band assuming a more melodic approach without diluting the raw direction deployed on earlier records.

Repurposing a rented basement flat as a fully-fledged studio in order to lay down tracks, Teenanger prove they’re no strangers to creative graft. Such free-spirited resourcefulness is given ample room to bloom on their sixth album, an ethos that aurally translates into a branch of rough-hewn '90s output not dissimilar to that delivered by a few of the decade’s alternative big hitters. An amalgamation of acts such as Sonic Youth and Yo La Tengo creep through, particularly via the murky gauze of “The Drain”, while the quasi-math rock of “Trillium Song” projects the quartet’s ability to pick-and-mix styles with quickfire ease; staccato guitar rhythms conversing with burrowing bass timbre in a comforting embrace.

Alignment towards more sugar-coated fare is most evident on “Pleasure”, radiating as it does with innocuously carefree twee charm; an innocence interpolated with the unnerving subtext of tracks such as “Straight to Computer”, erupting with tonal ambiguity, fissured with the unmistakable digital refrains of dial-up internet. Tapping a similar narrative focus, lead single “Touching Glass” revolves around an encroaching sense of complacent mass surrender to technology, the song deriving much of its influence, according to Ball, from John Carpenter's 1988 cult film They Live.

Good Time finds Teenanger broaching topics attuned to the evolving hail of pressures impacting day-to-day life, while simultaneously serving flurries of optimism - a fine line trodden with poise and wandering appeal.