Super-normal trash talk

The Teenagers are famous - if that's what you want to call it - for swearing. The Parisian synth'n'spoken-word trio had never played a show when blogs seized upon the rather vivid lyrics of their posted-online song Homecoming, a tongue-in-cheek account of a trans-Atlantic tryst.

"There is lots of swearing in the early songs, I know," says Quentin Delafon, the Teenagers' frontman.

"But we learnt our English from watching bad American movies, bad American TV, so we just thought that this is super-normal, like just how people talk."

In a previous era, the 25-year-old Delafon would have been called Eurotrash. In this downloadable day and age, he's just another identikit hipster in the global village's singular forum: MySpace.

It was through Rupert Murdoch's social-networking monolith that the Teenagers reached the world.

Formed on Christmas Day, 2005, as an excuse to "get drunk and make music", the trio of high-school pals matched cheap synth beats to sleazy lyrics spoken in French accents.

"We started more as a joke than anything else," remembers Delafon.

"About eight months later, we had labels contacting us through MySpace, trying to sign us. That was the moment I thought 'Whoa, shut up! It's real!' Things got super-crazy."

Writing songs about casual teenage sex, Delafon says, was a way of trying to redress their own teenaged failings.

"We were, like, losers in high school," he recounts. "I mean, we were smoking pot, but we weren't getting drunk and having sex. It's very, very fictional. Sometimes, I think it's stuff we wish we would've gone through when we were teenagers."

In the liner-notes to the Teenagers' ironically titled debut disc, Reality Check, Delafon gives thanks to novelists Bret Easton Ellis and Michel Houellebecq, proving there's artistic ambition to his tales of teenage ennui.

"There is, like, a double understanding to our music," he says.

"If people only want to see the fun side or the, like, super-dirty side, that's OK, they have to understand it in their own way. But to me there is an extra added depth to it."

While the band's name wasn't thought of as a commentary on new-millennial adults - "We must be super-stupid, because we were never, like, super-conscious about what it meant" - Delafon says that, in hindsight, he's glad it evokes such a notion.

"In France, a lot of people are pushing back the moment where they grow up," says Delafon. "Most of our parents were already married and had kids when they were our age, and here we are, being in a band, f---ing up, having fun. Maybe one day we will have a big wake-up call, be 40 and think, 'I've wasted my life!"'

This week, the Teenagers are bringing that party to local hipsters, Delafon hoping Australian girls will consider him "super-exotic". Having recently toured America, the singer had to deal with his own band's novelty music, on a nightly basis.

"If we're on tour, and I feel like I'm becoming bored, I always tell myself: 'Shut up! This is super-cool!"' Delafon says.

"I've always had a pretty positive attitude to life, but in this band I have learnt I have to be super-positive."

That lesson came with the completion of Reality Check.

"After we were finished, and it was mastered, I couldn't listen to it. I realised that you can overdose on our songs," he says, echoing the sentiments of listeners worldwide.

With references to Shannen Doherty and Mariah Carey, and a sentimental ode to his favourite screen siren Scarlett Johansson, Delafon regurgitates trash culture in all its marvellous vacuousness.

"People think we're anti-American, some people think we worship Americans, but we're not either. We are a concept. We talk about the fantasy life that people live, how super-obsessive they get with celebrities.

"I like that trash culture is trash, that's it's super-disposable, you can just throw it away.

"When you watch 90210, it's colourful, it's lively, it's not super-heavy. Sometimes it's good to just wash your brain out, and escape from reality. That's what (the Teenagers) is supposed to be.

"Maybe we're not as super-cheesy as 90210, but we want to be something super-fun and light."

The Teenagers play Billboard The Venue tonight. Reality Check is out on Remote Control.