Sexy Teenagers

When dealing with a band like The Sexy Teenagers, you have to start with the facts; not because they tell the story, because one can't get the story until they see the band in action. You start there because you have to start somewhere. The Sexy Teenagers are a four-piece punk band from Rochester, New York. They are Chris Buhr (guitar / vocals), Andrew Bement (drums), Baja Mixer (guitar / vocals) and John Adams (bass / vocals). Taking their queues from the hard-drinking punk bands of the Midwest and the open-journal lyrical styling of second-wave emo acts, the band plays driving, polished songs about bad sex, professional failure, and all the missteps one can take on the way into the light. Let's pause from the facts for a moment of conjecture. Before the Sexy Teenagers, Adams and Bement performed at open mic nights around the city as “Red Bush Bill Presents The Eskimo Bros.” That outfit is notable for two reasons; it would perform the shells of what would eventually become the Sexy Teenager's first album, and it possessed quite possibly the worst band name in the long and proud history of human musical performance. Facts, again. After developing a reputation for its high-energy and, quite frankly, reckless live performances, the band signed with Eat Here Records in 2013. The band released its debut full-length, Look What This Cheesecake Has Done to Us, in 2014. The band has played over 100 shows, touring the Northeast and Midwest twice and sharing bills with everyone from punk rock royalty (CJ Ramone), to up-and-coming scene leaders (RVIVR, Captain, We're Sinking, The Murderburgers), to genre-bending acts united in onstage mania (Peelander-Z, Psychostick), to the inexplicable (Bam Margera). The band will release a new EP early in 2016, with a second full-length to follow later in the year. It is at this point that we must depart from the easily proved and move into the metaphysical realm. Everything that you read next is true, but impossible to prove. You will have to either believe what you read, or see the band in action and make your own judgment. The Sexy Teenagers are one of the most professional, driven, dedicated bands working in punk rock. At the same time, the Sexy Teenagers are perpetually about to fall completely apart. Astute readers will see that the band has played over 100 shows in the last within three calendar years. Bands do not get to play that many shows without practice. One cannot develop the kind of reputation and connections required to tour hundreds of miles away from one's home city without taking one's music seriously and treating one's fans, venues, promoters and bands with supreme respect. Many bands pride themselves on the speed and volume of their song writing efforts. The Sexy Teenagers take the opposite approach, working a smaller number of songs over and over, until all fat has been trimmed and what remains is as precise as a jet engine. Its members work and re-work their sets, intent on seeing that no patron ever see the same show twice. They are, in a word, professional. On the other hand, there is more than enough evidence to suggest that the band is nothing more than a joke that only its members truly understand. Like the Replacements before them, liquid shabbiness is central to the band's appeal. Few can perform as close to the edge of functionality as its members can, walking like zombies but playing like a symphony. The Sexy Teenagers had to work very hard to allow themselves to be this unhinged, this strikingly ramshackle. Pre-show rituals include drinking hard liquor, shotgunning beers, chain smoking cigarettes and essentially bringing themselves to the point of near failure before letting muscle memory and repetition take hold. The members party hard, then play music the hard-parties who need something to take the edge off a two-shift Friday or a 60-hour workweek. Consider this: Punk has no time for sports-talk-radio listeners, for grass-cutters, for those whom music is just a temporary escape and not a worldview. Punk wants only to speak to other punks, to hear its own sermon reflected back from the mouth of the baptized. In this way, the Sexy Teenagers truly set themselves apart – its gone working class. The band is not interested in speaking to those who already know the words, it aims to find the greater animal in all of us, to speak to the base desires that need to be let free. Sexy Teenagers is not a band, it's a party. Its members might spill themselves all over the stage, but everyone needs a release. It can be yours.