Side Stage

Spotlighting the best of local music: Teenage Talking Cars
by Lesley Bargar

A couple of weeks ago I was waiting outside Silver Lake’s margarita mecca El Conquistador when a delectably disheveled girl in combat boots and a shredded white dress stumbled out to the curb. Obviously looking for a slurring partner, she turned to the sidewalk’s only other inhabitant—me—and erupted into a rant about getting kicked out of the Fuck Yeah!! Fest for pouring a drink on the Fest’s founder, breaking back in, and then diving into the window of a friend’s moving car (on its way to El Conquistador, no doubt) to escape being caught…again. Her tirade also included offering to bring me the ice from her margarita, 37 mentions of the word “fuck,” and the revelation that her name was Ammo. All of it made me love her. None of it clued me in that she was the lead screamer in the group of surfy, dance-punk gallivanters Teenage Talking Cars. But a few minutes later—the tequila apparently not affecting her marketing skills—Ammo handed me a CD and it all made sense. Only the Karen O-like warped warbler of this sweaty audio/visual assault could be so damn punk rock on a Sunday afternoon.

The Teenage-ers—Ammo (yelling), Poul J (bass), Taylor (drums)—started playing together having never so much as sneezed on their instruments, but soon began playing shows anyway, and managed to win over now-guitarist De La Cruz in the bumpy and bloody process. Heavy dance bass and drums pump like heavy-metal fists behind the glammy guitar shreds and Ammo’s scream-along vocals on both their debut self-titled EP and the many fruitful stages of L.A.’s east side. And though I’m not sure who exactly the talking cars belong to, it’s hoped these spirited kids will be diving headfirst into the moving windows of them for years to come. Or at least offer strangers their margaritas.

Teenage Talking Cars play the Echo on Sept. 15 for the Eastside Art Crawl.