Teenage Tom Petties

The 90s are feeding into a lot of modern music. But whether it’s the puerile plastic pop-punk of Machine Gun Kelly (ugh!) or the more edifying sounds of bands like Car Seat Headrest it tends to be an image formed for by those who were never there.

The debut album from Teenage Tom Petties is a different beast: a semi-autobiographical account of a 90’s teenager, growing up in suburbia, written by someone who was there. Or at least through the eyes of a 40-year-old reminiscing – distorted in every sense.

Teenage Tom Petties is the home-recorded garage punk project of Tom Brown (of the indie-rock duo Rural France) and they release their S/T album on Safe Suburban Home and Repeating Cloud on 3rd June 2022.

TTP bristles with the excitement of teenage life – the discoveries, the obsessions, the failures, the mundanity – cut through with the lo-fi indie rock sounds of early Lemonheads, Dinosaur Jr and even some Descendants. The album captures the grandness and smallness of teenage life in a suitably brisk 8 songs and 14 minutes.

In the world of a teenager, their room (even a boxroom) can be a whole world, or universe, especially before the internet. It’s this place that love takes root and grows – and it’s from the boxroom this album has grown. It’s a reflection on the past from a songwriter who never appreciated that time in the first instance, but understands its importance now.
For Tom, it was important that the music sounded like an artefact from the time, not modern studio polish. Recorded at home on a Strat, practice amp and a neighbour’s bass guitar, the vibe is pure garage. The self-mixed finish lends it the lo-fi air of so much of the classic 90s underground rock.

And that’s it, Teenage Tom Petties is nostalgia for those that lived it and those that didn’t. It tells stories for teenagers then and now. And it does it all to a fuzzy blast of big pop choruses and lo-fi charm.

It’s the best lost 90’s indie-rock classic, released right now.