DOWNLOAD: Teenage Kicks - "Shook Our Bones"

Somehow I ended up on a distro. list for bands playing around the Toronto area so I gave one of the bands a listen the other day.

I hadn’t heard Teenage Kicks before listening to their debut 7” Shook Our Bones but the band's sound caught my ear right away. Singer/songwriter Peter van Helvoort cites his influences as The Beatles, Cheap Trick, The Who, and Creedence Clearwater Revival but I’m hearing more of the later-day FM-radio bands that I grew up with like Paul Westerberg, Jason Ringenberg and Dan Baird in this two-track single.

Here is a clip from the band’s bio:
Teenage Kicks are not special. Teenage Kicks are not hip. Teenage Kicks are not on the cover of trendsetting magazines or fawned over in taste-making blogs. Teenage Kicks are a rock and roll band.

"We're not very cool, we never have been" admits singer/songwriter Peter van Helvoort. "Patrick is cool, but Jeff, Cam and I are not cool guys. We're a very uncool band."

The frontman is allowed to admit this because he knows his band has something that most "cool" bands lack - great songs. His band draws its influences from pop rock legends - The Beatles, Cheap Trick, The Who, Creedence Clearwater Revival - and carries the torch forward. Teenage Kicks understand that a band becomes great not by emulating the aesthetic of its influences, but by creating something new with them.

"I think we tend to stick out like a sore thumb in the city, playing the music we do, in the places we play" the singer laughs. "I grew up on what you'd call the 'arena rock' sound, I just absolutely love big melodies and big guitars, that's what I grew up listening to, and that's what I want to write and play."

"All the best ideas and melodies come from that golden age in Soul and Rock music" adds brother and bassist Jeff van Helvoort. "We want to write songs that can take the best parts of all those bands and make them into something of our own, not just a reproduction of one aspect of them. I wouldn't be happy going up on stage and doing an impersonation of my favourite band."

Shook Our Bones comes out on August 17th, 2010 and the band is playing a release party show at Sneaky Dees in Toronto on August 20th, 2010.

UPCOMING SHOWS
Aug 14 @ Marcello's, MISSISSAUGA
Aug 20 @ Sneaky Dees, TORONTO (**7 Inch Release Show w. Sandman Viper Command, The Bad Ideas)
Aug 21 @ Call the Office, LONDON (w. The Bad Ideas)
Aug 22 @ The Mansion, ST. CATHARINES

Links:
Teenage Kicks