The Meant To Be

TEEN “Rose 4 U”

The first two releases by TEEN were frustrating to me because while I was very impressed by some aspects of the band – Teeny Lieberson’s voice, her particular melodic sensibility, the band’s taste in keyboard tones – the songs were, for the most part, too stiff and inert. But now that they’ve got a new bass player, it all totally clicks. Boshra AlSaadi has a very warm and funky style, and it loosens everything up and keeps their treble-heavy music from sounding too flat or brittle. “Rose 4 U” makes the most of the band’s new dynamic – everything in the song pivots off AlSaadi’s groove, in sometimes very unexpected ways. I especially love the way it keeps building as it moves along, and when everything drops out to foreground the vocal harmonies, it comes back feeling vaguely Motown-ish in the finale.

Buy it from Amazon.