
#30
Teenage Cool Kids: “Volvo To A Kiss”
[from Denton After Sunset / Dull Tools]
I missed out on the lo-fi movement that took over the underground in the early nineties. By the time Kurt Cobain had taken his own life, I was barely a sophomore in high school and I was doing my best to travel back through a sea of his influences in an era where the idea of downloading an artist’s entire discography over a torrent was a few years away. Because of this I never fully attached to groups like Sebadoh or Dinosaur, Jr. Though I’m pretty sure I still have Codeine’s first full-length somewhere in a box. By the time I heard J. Mascis, he was hitting golf balls from the tops of skyscrapers in the video for “Feel The Pain” and I had missed the boat on emotionally tying them to the early part of my youth. As much as I’ve always respected their work, I’ve never felt a longing to have them in my life.
Denton’s Teenage Cool Kids exude all the best aspects of that period of time in music. There’s a hunger and a longing that’s present in their sound that circles around the idea of musical perfection and then says, “fuck it” and starts doing doughnuts all over perfection’s carefully manicured lawn. “Volvo To A Kiss” should be playing loudly in the car of every single person that’s driving away from something they are desperate to leave behind. Getaway Song Of The Year.