Send "Ten Kens " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Noripcord |
 Twenty years ago, a little band known simply as The Pixies put out an album entitled, Surfer Rosa. Surfer Rosa, as history would tell, played precursor to what would inevitably become an awakening of sorts, a movement that would bring “alternative” music to the ears of many. Surfer Rosa would also inspire another little album: Nevermind by Nirvana.As we hurtle at breakneck speeds toward the end of our no-longer-new millennial decade, Ten Kens, Canadian alt-rock quartet, bring us full circle with their self-titled debut album and pick up where Surfer Rosa left off, constructing groove-heavy alterna-pop tunes that owe more to artistic merit and song craft than flavor-of-the-month bandwagon schmoozing. They even keep those Steve Albini-flavored snare beats so as to rattle your skull. As the album plays, it’s evident that the quartet, (guitarist, Dean Tzenos, singer, Dan Workman, bassist, Lee Stringle, and drummer, Ryan Roantree), have gained more from early-nineties slacker flannel than mid-millennia hipster denim, though I wouldn't call them "throwbacks." Just hearing the first loud and crunchy guitar notes cut through opening track, Bearfight, it’s refreshingly evident that a categorically indie rock group is offering more than just rehashed 80s post-punk or 60s psych and, for all we know, may be giving us a hopeful glimpse of what’s to come....full text |
| Drownedinsound |
| Whilst the odd epic, eyes-to-heaven high note and Canadian origins will probably make Arcade Fire a likely comparison, Toronto’s Ten Kens often have more in common with the likes of psychedelic rockers Black Mountain, different enough in their indie-psych style to not be completely conventional but accessible enough to not be alienating. Laden with enough reverb to transform even the slightest squeak into a glass-shattering thunderclap, the expansive effects ensure Ten Kens sounds massive right from the off, the guitars threatening to swallow the rest whole as early as opener ‘Bearfight’ as the fuzzy, cracked distortion grandly swamps the drums as if they were all recorded in some endless cavernous space. Yet when the dust settles around their eponymous debut, the actually-Kenless quartet give the impression that they’re not actually a brooding bunch, merely a band who want to make something a little darker than the handclaps of college rock they sound like they once admired....full text |
Ten Kens lyrics
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