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Listen to This!
The Awkward Stage's nostalgic, teen angsty "The Morons Are Winning."
The Awkward Stage
By day, 34-year-old Shane Nelken is a cremationist at Vancouver's Mountain View Cemetery. By night, with his new band, The Awkward Stage, he thinks about what it was like to get pantsed in gym class.
"The Awkward Stage came to me in the silence that occurred during the third dunk of my head into the junior high toilet," he tells MySpace readers.
The band is a welcome indie pop addition to a long line of televised, filmic, and literary celebrations of prom night dysfunction, untimely boners and sweaty slow dances -- you know, awkward stuff.
The Awkward Stage's debut album, Heaven is for Easy Girls, was released this fall on Mint Records. It was co-produced and engineered by The New Pornographers' drummer Kurt Dahle, and follows the "Vancouver" trail of colourful power pop treaded by artists like A.C. Newman, The Salteens and Sparrow.
Before forming The Awkward Stage, Nelken was a major collaborator on other music projects that weren't his own. His lyrics about blooming late match Nelken's own late arrival at the helm of his own band.
Like most puberties, the album improves drastically by the end. Opening tracks "The Morons are Winning" and "So Stupid, So Smart" fall open like the first pages of a high school yearbook, laying the groundwork for the album's broken-glasses ambitions. But Heaven truly finds its feet, with the offhand buoyancy of "We're Going for a Ride" and the faux majesty of "West Van Girl," a regional response to "Uptown Girl."
The best moment of the album lies outside the car rides and West Van girls with a retreat to loner solitudes with "The Room Tone." It's a comforting alternative for those who might cringe at the thought of grinding to JT's "Sexyback" at the next winter formal. The Awkward Stage urges listeners to dance with the skeletons in their closets instead, casting Timberlake dreams aside for more bittersweet pastures.
Listen to The Awkward Stage on the band's MySpace page.
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Jackie Wong was The Tyee's books and outreach co-ordinator. She helps to co-ordinate Music Pix and is a regular music writer. ![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
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6
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apollyon
5 years ago
Comments on "Listen to This!"
I'm glad to see the Tyee delving into the indie music scene. Vancouver's got a great one and Canada in general is kicking some sweet ace in what we're producing. The Tyee could really help in pluggin' this scene and attracting some more people to their shows.
And now a minute of silence for The Organ!
weezy
5 years ago
This is our local, Vancouver up and coming band!?! So why then, do they use a man's masturbation sack in the shape of a woman, in a hearse as the album cover?
Vancouver has become internationally known this year and will go down in history for the number of dead women molested and killed on a pig farm.
Considering our current times and that this is our local up and coming band; I'm calling on Awkward stage, and Mint Records, change the album cover - it sucks!
shane72
5 years ago
As singer and leader of The Awkward Stage I felt the strong need to reply to that last comment on my album cover.
weezy, how dare you draw such a horrible parallel between a cover concept you obviously don't understand and the horrible
fates suffered by my east van sisters. Shame on you, you humourless moron. You suck.
Michelle Hoar
5 years ago
Gotta agree heartily with Shane here. His cover is just a goofy harmless joke, and really doesn't warrant that kind of vitriolic response.
Now, if you wanted to criticize the recent wave of crime shows that revel in the murder of women mainly, then there's a worthwhile target.
shane72
5 years ago
thank you gardengirl. And weezy, I apologize for calling you a humourless moron but you were way off base and although you may have chosen the right battle, you're rage is misdirected and drawing a parallel between a pop record and serial murders serves only to trivialize those terrible crimes. I am extremely saddened and sympathetic to those victims and their families and shouldn't even have to say it.
You are probably alot of fun at parties.
am i right? phone ringing off the hook?
axel2006
5 years ago
Weezy,
Your consternation over a goofy album cover and your assumption that they are somehow related to mass murder is completly and utterly asinine.
Maybe try and get angry about something more important.