The Teenbeat formed in Liverpool in the mid-1990s, and are led by Adrian Shaw a dryly amusing fellow often seen rattling the perimeter fence of the London conceptual-art scene. The band record in vast, incoherent jams, then cherry-pick the best bits, which suggest Alan Bennett fronting the Velvet Underground, or George Formby singing Hank Williams. with a little spit and polish, they could be as quirky a commercial proposition as Pulp once were, but one suspects The Teenbeat are reluctant to spoil something secretly special. Rating: 4/5. Review by Stewart Lee.

The Teenbeat appeared In James Jam's Pick Of The Week featuring bands from NME' online Breaking Bands website. Choice 2 out of 5 bands... Look beyond singer Adrian Shaw's glorious Liverpudlian (sic) mumble and you'll find songs as charming as Pulp, as sordid as the Velvets, and as magnificently maudlin as Lambchop.

The Teenbeat have been around forever. Really. This 3 CD collection is just the tip of what they have recorded down the years since their inception. Forever is actually about 10 years. I first became aware of The Teenbeat when I saw some of their London gigs in 2000. That seems like a different lifetime now. So receiving this colossal retrospective was both a surprise and a joy.

Three reasons to love The Teenbeat.

1. Their songs. The sense of dispair and fun which shine through in equal measure.

2. Their singer. Adrian Shaw. A man possessed of a great lyrical turn of phrase that can conjure funny, sick or sad images all at once.

3. Their music. Loose. Tight. Together. Apart. This was a band that could play. And they did. All the time. Gigs are less frequent these days. But these 62 songs showcase the band in all their settings, live, jamming and recording. It's like hearing out takes of some great lost band.

Do you need more reasons than this? The band have a DIY ethic that is admirable. They didn't wait around to be found. They just did their own thing. Making their own CDs and video's and getting their own gigs and taking their kicks where they could find them. They have made countless CDR releases and have sold them at their gigs and later online. Who needs the music industry? You really can do it yourself.

Thinking I knew The Teenbeat reasonably well before hearing this compilation, I now realise I knew so little. My favourites like Stairways, Aldi Girl, Shit Weather and Dead Bird all surface on CD1. It's when you get deep into CD2 and CD3 that you actually realise there is so much more to love and even more to hear from The Teenbeat.

This isn't a hi-fi recording. It's just a band playing quirky and offbeat songs, brilliantly. Apparently there is enough material in the can so to speak, for a few more Teenbeat retrospectives. That can only be a good thing.

You want me to describe the music? Tough call. It's easier to head over to the website and download a few tracks to help convince you to buy this compilation. there are 7 tracks to be heard on MP3. including favourites of mine I Got Big and Aldi Girl.

Just how great are The Teenbeat? Very. Sounding like The Fall with more than one song this tape contains a massive 32 different takes on their acoustic lo-fi world. songs about teenage girls, weather, and pullovers! More "real" than any other band the lyrics are sometimes bitter, sometimes fun. all wrapped up in terrible production. big thumbs up!

Bulimia queen, I bought you pop and crisps from the vending machine... croons Adrian Shaw in the ode to a sixteen-year-old whose name appears to be Urina. Not a common name, admittedly, but it does help the rhyming scheme later on when, in a sad climax, she drinks… wait for it …toilet cleaner. Such lack of respect for taste and convention along with the irony-free delivery are probably what makes this 90 minutes of The Teenbeat such a joy. What the tape most resembles is one of those cut 'n' paste collages where sloppy editing, a Dadaistic sense of context and plenty of hiss make everyone a potential phono-terrorist. The difference here is that everything, except for the odd John Shuttleworth skit, is played by a band favouring the spasticity of early Wire filtered through Half Man Half Biscuit via Jim Reeves and the leapfrog logic is the inside of Shaw's head.

With a name like 'Teenbeat' I was expecting a punkpoppower combo, thankfully Teenbeat aren't part of this overpopulated genre but are something quite different. It's a long album clocking in at nearly an hour and a half and both sides is different. The first side is a very strange experience, it sounds a bit like the All Seeing Eye, English eccentricism set to lofi music. The songs are full of strange lyrics and even stranger fills between songs. the other side is a little more conventional, English country best describes it. The tape starts to drag a little but for something this long it still manages to hold your attention, mainly you're wondering, what the hell's going to happen next?

This new band has a very different happy almost pop sound. They are a band based partly in Birkenhead and partly in Surbiton. The tracks have a wonderful catchy, almost bouncy beat. The lyrics are nice and there is a lot of experimentation, some tracks have a kind of Caribbean drumming, others are mostly guitar. As the tape goes on the music gets fuller and more mature, and the band prooves they can do some more mellow stuff.

The Robot Mervin concept album they did for Robots and Electronic Brains was fantastic. Adrian Shaw is a special kind of deranged genius.

The Teenbeat's world is small but viewed at a very high resolution and with full zoom. they deal with the details in life, the tiny facets of the everyday that pass most of us by. Theirs is a childlike perception of often adult concerns, but also of a childhood past with layers of grown-up reflection. take the garages at the end of the alley that runs down the back of our terrace. Looking back, the garages were more than just automobile repositories, they were somewhere to smoke surreptitious fags, conduct furtive rendezvous with the girl from the youth club, trap boys from the other local school and sling rocks at them with a catapult, spy on a neighbour's wife hanging out her just-washed bras and panties, drink home-brew filched from a mate's dad's loft while he's on the evening shift, throw up, marvel at the skins rool biro-and-compass tattoo across the forearm of the chap from over the road's teenage squaddie son, oggle at the almost unbelievable pictures in a torn copy of razzle found on the waste ground over the back, lie in the summer sun and spin tall tales of future fame, lie in the summer evenings and spin tall tales of future girlfriends, play football, tennis and cricket in season, cough uncontrollably after a first joint, avoid the kids who sometimes come round to sniff glue, cry quietly (and alone) after a playground rejection, experiment with petrol, matches and the tramp's mattress while he's away down the town centre for more booze, lay glass across the front of the garage rented by the posh bastard from up the road, fumble with the unexpected complexity of the undergarments belonging to a girl from the next street... when you enter The Teenbeat's world you're treated to these macroscopic views of the back of the garages or Anglesey, or the local club, or work or whatever else is on the mind of Adrian R. Shaw - the man at the helm, in a loose kind of sense - while the rest of the band make shadowy and awkward Beat Happening noises. You won't want to leave.

Adrian (vocals), Kev (guitar), Neil (bass), Lee (drums) are mates from Birkenhead. They've been together for a couple of years now and hope to build a proper shrine. The Teenbeat shrine is presently in a wood in a tree hollow where they leave a special object each time they go. They know their singles will probably never be available in the shops, but who cares? With their battered 4-track, a guitar and a computer, they're perfectly capable to create great tunes like the cool and nonchalent Stairways or Tonka Toy. These two tracks are taken from their debut album.

Is someone taking the piss out of me? Is someone playing an insane game with me by sending me the unreleased solo album by Damon Albarn? Hhhhmmm, am I such a dickhead to think Damon would be sending it to me? Nooo, I'm listening to The Teenbeat who are very DIY-ish band. Most of the stuff is acoustic stuff... 'isn't acoustic stuff very boring?', I hear you ask. Well if MTV-Unplugged is your idea about acoustic stuff then it is... but here you'll hear a band who can hold my attention for 90 minutes (...there are about 30 songs on here!) with a minimal of technical equipment... not all the songs are as strong, there are some moments you're thinking you've already heard it before, but most of the time I'm in fine company... and if you're a Teenbeat fan, may I recommend you their Doorstep zine? It's hilarious... oh yeah, if I would have a record company I'll immediately release Shit Weather as a single, heartbreaking stuff! But same can be said about Scarborough ...you already have two singles then!"
The Original Sin zine - July 1999

The demo tape proves them to be not the twee, glittery teen-c pop combo their name may suggest. and forget lo-fi - this is absolutely horizontal-fi: Tonka Toy sounds like it's been recorded on one. But then toys are fun, and so are The Teenbeat. Their simplicity is charming, and carried through to their observant and logical lyrics - 'you're a girl and I'm a boy...'. B-side is a country-style tribute to the "premier rock venue in the northwest" which is in Birkenhead, goes by the name of Stairways, and one can apparently "lose their innocence" for the price of a drink - a snip at 5op". a CD of 43 minutes of pure aural gold with more hidden gems.