Imperial Teen's 'All Over You' Is a Gleeful Masterpiece of Four-Way Harmony
The Sonic Breakdown
The Production & Mix
The Low-End: Jone Stebbins’ bass is mixed forward and round, carrying melody as often as root notes, and Lynn Truell’s kit is recorded with the toms unusually present — which pays off enormously on “Have a Shout,” where Roddy Bottum has pointed out the background vocals are “almost louder than the lead, because they’re so good.”
The Spatial Dynamics: This should not cohere. Ryan Conway tracked at Conway Sound in Denver, Nels Jensen at The Pie Studios in Pasadena, and Bottum cut additional guitars and keys himself at The Laundry Room in Provincetown. Claudius Mittendorfer’s mix is what welds it: a single bright, dry, mid-forward space, with Dave Cooley’s mastering at Elysian Masters keeping the synths from crowding the guitars. Will Schwartz says the anchor tracks were cut live — “in the same room at the same time” — and that’s the glue underneath the geography.
Standout Performance
Lynn Truell. She drums the whole record, sings lead on “Hands All Up,” “Get You Home” and “Have a Shout,” and improvised the title track’s percussion on the spot — “claps, glass bottles, snare brushes and careless swats on the tom drums,” as she described it. Thirty years after Seasick, she is the record’s rhythmic and tonal centre.
Track Highlights
⚡ “Overdrive” — the opener, all stabbing riffs and bouncy synth, with a cheeky lifted Sex Pistols line Bottum owns up to freely.
🌈 “Kiss It Goodbye” — Bottum’s favourite sentiment on the record: “Blunders are beautiful. Mistakes are blessings. Wrong is magic.”
⚡ “Bringing It Down” — Joey Holman guests on guitar, and the song is openly about the cost of keeping a band together. Bottum says it makes him cry. Loud Women called it “a particularly moving ending”; Glide’s John Moore called the album “a masterclass in indie pop.” Sun 13 went further and called it the indie-pop album of the year.