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Teenager by Steven Kidder, Song #6, "I Like It" If “I Want X” has a sister song on this record, it would absolutely be “I Like It”. This is another track that heavily evokes a club atmosphere and yet again saturates us with crackling synths and bubbling clicks of sonic wonder. Stephen Kidder becomes our DJ again. However, this is a decidedly different club than in that earlier track. When the beat drops around the 1:30 mark, the kick is more consistently intense in its poundi

Teenager by Steven Kidder, Song #7, "Yesterday" “Yesterday” opens with a close-up vocal, tender with concern, and the sparest drum and percussion arrangement on the album, Teenager. The lyrics describe someone frozen with fear, seen as though from the perspective of a loving friend or parent. The delicate vocal is contrasted with deep warm synth waves that pull at the song's harmony, perhaps conveying the difficulties faced by the subject, frozen with fear and crying. “Let th

Teenager by Steven Kidder, Song #5, "Dysfunctional Hell" Lots of things come to mind when listening to “Dysfunctional Hell”, one of the darkest songs on “Teenager” and one of the most rich in content and emotion. I’d like to focus on the music rather than the lyrics, though a thorough exploration of the opposing emotions and once again, at times seemingly tongue-in-cheek (in the darkest of ways: “100 species went extinct today”) treatment is definitely necessary at some poi

Teenager by Steven Kidder, Song #3, "Thank You, Thank You" “Is this really his first album?” My friend is amazed. It's after midnight and we are driving through rural Vermont. Steven Kidder's song, “Thank You, Thank You,” is playing on my car stereo, the slow synth swells decorating the fog hovering over the road at eye level, its steady heartbeat pulse pulling us along; my car is gliding more smoothly than before. “Thank you, thank you, don’t know how I’d have got here with

Teenager by Steven Kidder, Song #4: “Feeling Down” “Feeling Down”, the fourth track on the album “Teenager” by Steven Kidder, has a sense of triumph in its melancholy. The initial lyrics are striking in their laying bare of the confusion surrounding indolence: “Don’t want to work // don’t want to play Don’t want to plan // not sure that I can Maybe a snack // is the thing I lack Maybe some friends // gonna help in the end” This is a song that is filled with questions an

Teenager by Steve Kidder, Song #2: "I Want X" When I first heard the final master of the song “I Want X”, I was riding on a train from Gloucester into Boston. As I watched the sun set over the sea, the grinding noise of the train tracks below me gave way to the initial clicks and clanks of the drum machine on the track. Pulsing, solemn vocals (much darker in tone and lyrical content than the previous song, “Fabulous Things”) begin to punch their way in, and then a classic N

Teenager by Steve Kidder, Song #1: "Fabulous Things" “Here is a collection Of fabulous things Curated, eclectic You’re the first one to see…” Is it shakers, crafted static sounds, both? “What is this? Sounds like Bowie, Blackstar era.” “It’s Steve.” I was in the lounge, racking up for a game of 9-ball, while something strange and beautiful unfurled from my friend’s portable speaker. Steven Kidder’s debut album, Teenager, opens with the shimmering Fabulous Things, a compellin