Lisa Prank is the recording project of Seattle’s Robin Edwards, a one-woman extraordinaire who aims to put the pop back into pop punk, or maybe the power back into power pop. Her latest album Adult Teen, follow-up to 2014’s Crush on the World, has arrived just in time for the heat of the summer, a record that’s as catchy and fun as it is heartfelt and honest.
As the name suggests, Adult Teen deals in the ways that many 20- and 30-somethings are often not as “grown up” as is expected of them, particularly in regards to love and relationships. But as you might imagine from a guitar and drum machine-wielding whirlwind, these are not soft and tender songs pining for that special someone. Label Father/Daughter Records (who are releasing the vinyl issue of the album) describe the Lisa Prank sound as “dominated by bruised romanticism, introspective longing, and a palpable sense of desire, building a sound heavily influenced by 90s pop punk and the decade’s lighthearted culture”. A VHS-grained nostalgia for the Nineties is pretty prominent, from the stylistic nods to Blink 182 et al. to the teen movie blend of sincere and heartfelt worries and simple good fun. There’s even a track named ‘I Want to Believe’ for chrissakes.
The album wastes no time in getting right to the pop punk goodness, opener ‘Starting Again’ a sub-three minute blast which sees Edwards struggling to forget a former beau, even if they were something of a jerk.
“you say you’re not still drinking
you just started again
I swear I don’t still miss you
I just started again”
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‘Luv is Dumb’ rushes through its 1:30 run-time at breakneck speed, the tale of having all your thoughts reduced to a crush, while ‘Jumper’ has some electronic beats (from Edward’s trusty Roland MC-505 drum machine) behind restrained guitars, which eventually blossom to become warm and rich. Lyrically the song is a good illustration of the themes of the whole album, as Edwards sings “don’t wanna be in love cause it’s never enough / and I don’t wanna fall for you cause we’ll only make each other blue”. The rest of the songs exist in this same plane of self-examining melodrama, a life that’s begun to imitate all those 90s teen movies – all break-ups and make-ups and epiphanies of the ‘what-was-I-thinking?’ variety. ‘Baby Let Me Write Yr Lines’ is a hectic bounce-along track about growing to realise that you partner isn’t quite as special as you’d first thought, while ‘Drive Anywhere’ (which featured on Jon’s Toon Tunes effort for The Grey Estates) is about that confusion and loss of direction after a relationship breaks down.
“lights flashing
signs passing
I could drive anywhere
but there’s nowhere that
I really wanna go”
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Closer ‘I Want to Believe’ sounds warm and happy and hopeful, as Edwards sings lines that hold a belief that this time things will be different, that the complications of past relationships won’t appear in the next one. It’s not clear if this hope should be applauded or doubted – is having faith in things working out a virtue or simple naivete? Edwards is well aware of this bind herself, as she sings:
“and maybe I’m too optimistic
I never learn much from the past”
On Adult Teen, Lisa Prank deal with all the pitfalls of being a young person in the only way they know how. It’s an album that puts equal faith in the energy of pop punk and the connective power of sharing real feelings, Edwards swerving mumbling melancholy for something bright and brief and blazingly her own.
Adult Teen is out on cassette tape and vinyl from Father Daughter Records and Miscreant Records. All orders of the record come with limited edition sticker sheet (below!), designed by Faye Orlove, who also created the album artwork.
