The Morning After: Team B (BSS, Arcade Fire, Beirut, et al.)

The Morning After features thoughts on a quick tryst with a just-released album. No regrets.

It seems like a bad idea to acknowledge to a potential significant other, right up front, that you are, in fact, the backup and not the starter—after all, shouldn’t you let your personality pave the way for you, and not your second-bestness? But Team B didn’t allow their sometimes charming nature to act as a bridge into the band, instead labeling themselves effectively subordinate as the second stringers, Team B’s lineup of bit players from Broken Social Scene, Arcade Fire, LCD Soundsystem, and Beirut besides. But hey, at least they didn’t name the album Arcade Fire, LCD Soundsystem, Beirut, and Broken Social Scene Present Team B. That would have just been too much.

But for what it is, Team B’s music oscillates between the gentle and satisfying and the unfortunately mundane and juvenile. The album starts off well enough, and with a very welcome subtlety that belies the band members’ involvement in so many big noise acts. While this subtlety continues for the most part throughout the collection, a general unevenness of approach makes this seem less like a cohesive effort and more like a bunch of spare parts, with only Team B captain Kelly Pratt holding it together with his vocals. And as far as juvenilia is concerned, third track “Tons of Fun” would be great if he weren’t singing about what he’s singing about: “I don’t care what the other dudes say, ‘cuz my girl blows the competition away, now she may not be the fittest of the fit, but it’s nice to know she’ll never do any better than me…she’s tons of fun.” And the album is rife with these sorts of eyebrow-raising clevernesses, and the fact that “Tons of Fun” is one of the album’s best songs is indicative of a bigger problem—that, really, this is Team B, and there’s a reason why it’s not Team A.

Report Card: C+