NYLON - April 2008 - (Page 140)

YOUNG OFFENDERS Parisian trio the Teenagers can talk dirty to us any time. By Matt Glazebrook. Photographed by Adam Fedderly There are some lyrics that only a French accent can render elegant. “I fucked my American cunt” is one. “Just like I like it, she’s got nice tits” is another. It helps when the sentiments in question come wrapped in woozily murmuring guitar and backed by a gently chk-chk-ing drum machine, as on “Homecoming,” last summer’s cult hit single from cheekily ﬁlthy Parisian threesome the Teenagers. Accompanied by a retro-looking porno-chic video, the potty-mouthed duet is a mini pop masterpiece, by turns hilarious, sweet, and totally (if charmingly) chauvinistic. “On day two, I fucked her and it was wild,” frontman Quentin Delafon suavely intones. Then, fondly: “She’s such a slut.” The approach is repeated elsewhere on the group’s debut album Reality Check, for example when Delafon dreamily laments the departure of a one-night stand in the swooning “Sunset Beach”: “She left with the sunlight/ I cried through the moonlight /This fucking bitch deserves to die.” (In fairness, the former object of the narrator’s affections did make off with his Fender Jazzmaster guitar.) Yet Reality Check’s menagerie of vapid girls and horndog boys is a far cry from the soft-spoken twentysomethings huddled in the cramped kitchen of a Harlem apartment on the penultimate day of their ﬁrst U.S. tour, proffering a three-part harmony of cold symptoms. Delafon, artfully disheveled in a cardigan, vintage T-shirt, and bright red ski hat, snifﬂes while guitar and synth player Dorian Dumont periodically sneezes, and bassist Michael Szpiner, peering through thick plastic glasses beneath a mop of curls, has a hacking cough. His condition is not helped by the cloud of tobacco smoke emanating from Dumont’s corner of the kitchen, a fog from which Delafon shrinks away to the other side of the room (“I quit. I’d like to see what it’s like to be 35”). Their ailments are the result of a mid-tour crisis involving lost luggage and nights sleeping in a van. “We had a nervous breakdown,” says Delafon with a sheepish grin. “À la Mariah Carey.” All of this is new for the Teenagers. School friends from the suburbs of Paris—“not the burning-cars suburbs,” explains Dumont—the trio bonded despite disparate musical tastes. “Quentin is into pop, Dorian is into rock in general, and emo [cue anguished ‘shhhh’ from the guitarist], and I’m into hardcore and stuff,” says Szpiner, adding that all three admire doomy French electro-rock outﬁt M83. As Dumont tells it, the Teenagers took shape almost by accident: “It was Christmas 2005 and we were like, ‘Let’s make a song.’ And so we did ‘Fuck Nicole’ and put it on MySpace. We made nothing for six months and then we did ‘Homecoming.’ That was June 2006. By September, labels started to call, then we did our ﬁrst gig in February.” Released almost exactly a year after that ﬁrst gig, Reality Check is built on a deceptively pretty template of fuzzy, languid indiepop. Delafon’s droll, frequently spoken-word lyrics tackle burning pop culture questions (“If Ben Afﬂeck wasn’t making movies/ Would the world be better?”) and name-check everything and everyone from Wheel of Fortune to Scarlett Johannson (in the hilarious “Starlett Johannson”). “When we grew up in the ’80s and ’90s there was a lot of American stuff on TV, so even if we have the French voices talking over the American voices, it’s still like American culture,” explains the singer. Do they worry that stateside audiences might object to their beloved pop icons being appropriated and slyly satirized by sleazy Gallic hipsters? “People ask us if we’re anti-American or misogynistic. It’s very stupid,” says Delafon, sweetly. “You have to read between the lines. No one really stole any guitars from anyone.”

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of NYLON - April 2008

NYLON - April 2008 Contents Editor's Letter Par Avion Behind the Scenes Contributors Happily Ever After Mass Appeal: Punk Mass Appeal: Retro Mass Appeal: Glam Mass Appeal: Watches Haute Stuff Mass Appeal: Denim Private Icon: Shampoo Jeans of the Month Cult Of The Price is Right East Meets West Nesting: Flower Power The Observer Factory Girl: What a Girl Wants Hall of Fame Social Studies Poetry in Motion Beauty Street Style Fashion News Mania: Bottoms Up Directory: Somewhere Over the Rainbow Bella Donna Private Icon Counter Culture 'Tis the Season Beauty News Some Kind of Bliss Rocking Horses The Story So Far Personal Effects And This Bird Can Sing Young Offenders Geek Love Eyes Wide Open The Graduate Film Strips Culture Club En Route: In Vino Veritas Three of Hearts Head Trip The Shape of Things The Great Outdoors Star Maps Shopping List Bag Check

NYLON - April 2008

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