Teens in Trouble

Singer-songwriter-guitarist Lizzie Cuevas hails from San Francisco, where she's already a veteran of that city's music scene (the punky Sputterdoll - a band that I can't seem to find any discography - and The Glowing Stars, for whom the moniker '8-bit' is / was most definitely apt…) Her latest incarnation - despite being neither a teen or in trouble - as Teens in Trouble sees her long wistfully for somewhere rather closer to my adopted home…

A paean to the city she called home for a year, "Santa Monica" is a gorgeous fusion of dreamy, languid vocals that help create the most sublime of sixties girl group harmonies and which are all topped off by wistful lyrics, that I'm immediately drawn to comparisons with that student of sixties-pop, Le Pie.

As befits a song about that playground by the sea - name-checking the Pier with its iconic ferris wheel and the Ocean Park Boulevard which arrows down to the beach and the wide open public spaces of Dorothy Green Park - reverbed surf guitar subsides into West Coast indie-pop that conjures up images of early Best Coast (it's arguably a companion piece to Bethany and Bobb's "The only place.") And while the song's lyrics sees Lizzie forlornly listing all the reasons why she should love living in the City by the Bay - friends, family, even beach and sun, she's forced to admit that it's not Santa Monica - the mix of west-coast vibes and sixties-pop that ensures the song will be added to my PCH playlist (windows wound down, stereo cranked all the way to eleven - yes that playlist...)

The song's surreal video sees Lizzie out in the Southern California desert (Joshua Tree) and searching out the missing part to an old VCR - as you do - when, once repaired the machine reads her DNA before playing a grainy technicolour video of fifties / sixties Santa Monica... The place she really needs to be...




It's not obvious where Teens in Trouble is a one off project or whether this is the next phase of Lizzie's career. Either way it marks her as an artist worth keeping an ear out for...

Teens in Trouble (Website)
"Santa Monica" (Bandcamp)