New Music: Teenagers in Tokyo – “Peter Pan”

Since the early 80s Australia has had a large penchant for murky desolate music. Sparked by the wildfire that was the Birthday Party and Nick Cave, Sydney’s Teenagers in Tokyo represent the expansion of dark aussie romanticism into the realm of indie dance music.

The group consists of Samantha Lim, Miska Mandic, Linda Margiliano, Sophie McGinn, and Rudy Udovich, the first four of which could very well be stereotyped in Hollywood terms as femme fatales (Rudy doesn’t qualify due to his penis). Together they create a captivating mixture of dark pop akin to a late night club-crawl with the coolest vampires you’ve ever met. After their self-titled EP came out in 2008, the international music community quickly raised an intrigued eyebrow and soon they found themselves living in London, signed to Back Yard Recordings, and opening for acts such as C.S.S, The Gossip, and The Slits. Their debut LP Sacrifice dropped today Monday the 24^th. While the album and it’s promotion isn’t really new news, they apparently have yet to perform in the United States, a situation that needs to be addressed immediately.

A single from their new album, “Peter Pan” was originally released all the way back in March quickly followed by the video below (and a striped down remix by The Horrors). The song is a great example of a median between Teenagers’ dance floor and sinister lyrical tendencies, pieced together by basic spectral instrumental lines appropriate for foot stomping and Lim’s detached sensual wails expressing, from the looks of the music video, a very gloomy piece of awesome indeed.