My Teenage Stride - Ears Like Golden Bats (CD)

All Music Guide

For My Teenage Stride's third fulllength CD, singer/songwriter/multiinstrumentalist Jedediah Smith, who has tended in the past to use the band name for what was really a solo project, adds a group consisting of guitarist Dakkan Abbe, synthesizer player Tris McCall, bass player Michael Hollitscher, and drummer Brett Whitmoyer. The musical approach remains the same, however. On Ears Like Golden Bats, My Teenage Stride plays standardissue indie pop, which is to say that it makes music that sounds like the melodic, guitardriven pop/rock of the mid1960s, except that the vocal tracks are taken down a notch in the mix, so that those chiming guitar riffs are given greatest prominence, and the lyrics, to the extent they can be made out, are often nonlinear poetic, oddball observations, as can be appreciated by titles like "To Live and Die in the Airport Lounge" and "The Genie of New Jersey." It all bounces along pleasantly, but Smith co. never seem to be in danger of upstaging the kinds of ban...ds they emulate, nearforgotten ‘60s heroes like Blues Magoos and the Electric Prunes, for instance. - William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide Read more Less