Teddy Geiger
Underage Thinking (Look Where We Are Now)
Sony


If one had to define pop in two words, Teddy Geiger is it. He has the looks guaranteed to sell millions of posters and a voice and musical style that suggests he has been cloned from the good DNA of James Blunt and John Mayer. Not only that, he can pen a pretty mean song or three, the single For You I Will (Confidence) and the title song being two of the 14 on offer he wrote or co-wrote. Then to top it all off, damn it, he appears to be a gifted muso too, contributing piano, bass, guitar, percussion, programming and arrangements!

From the opening piano chords, reminiscent of something from the Beatles catalogue, and then the segue into the crashing guitars and drums introducing the first verse of These Walls, teenager Ted has with producer Billy Mann produced an album that is genuinely 100% pure pop. In fact some of the tracks approach stadium pop status; the ballad Seven Days Without You suggesting a mega audience sing along, and Try Too Hard, a great acoustic guitar driven track being the obligatory unplugged stage B inclusion. Certainly it's all mainstream pop that thankfully avoids the high saccharine levels that could have been achieved, while the level of writing suggests a reasonable career - the title track is about cutting the parental umbilical cord for example.

I acknowledge that this is the tour edition, thus requiring extra tracks. But whoever was responsible for the inclusion of the remixes at 13 and 14 of For You I Will and These Walls should be summarily executed. Their beats destroy the whole pop credo the album built up to, creating major sonic frustration. Their 12 minutes was not needed to extend the album to 56 minutes because guys, it wasn't that long ago that 44 minutes was considered the standard for a quality album ie YOU DIDN'T NEED TO DO IT! Include some live tracks instead, as per the bonus DVD which includes obligatory videos, live videos, home videos, makings ofs and a photo scrapbook although the DVD is more for the fan, than the casual passer-by.

Overall a damn good release, faux pas excluded.

Mark Liebelt