Pitchfork

It's back to the future all over again for the 1981 sports car with a stainless steel exterior and futuristic gull-wing doors. Pealing out hot on the skid marks of Neon Neon's John DeLorean-themed, Pitchfork-recommended Stainless Style comes Delorean, an electro-pop group from Spain who I'm told turned heads at SXSW like a flux capacitator-equipped DMC-12 hitting 88 mph. How fitting, then, that their sleek dance remix of the newest single by London/Paris trio the Teenagers opens with the ticking of a clock. Especially because the best songs on the Teenagers' 2008 debut, Reality Check, are so focused on those fleeting moments when sex, celebrity, and youth all converge. Andy Warhol begins bombing in 15 minutes.

Like previous singles "Homecoming", "Starlett Johansson", and "Fuck Nicole", the Teenagers' original version of "Love No" sugarcoats an apparently sincere sleaziness with New Order dance-pop guitars, radio-friendly compression and hooks, and painfully familiar pop-culture references. Imagine if Art Brut and the Tough Alliance formed a band, then started speak-singing about MySpace in a French akhzent to pick up zee girls. When the Teenagers say they're not in love (with you), they do a brutal impression of the object of their non-affection, linking pepperoni pizza, Showgirls, and red-rimmed eyes (from spending so much time on the computer ... "or maybe it's the-- whatever") with a rapper-like casualness. Then they turn the tables on their imagined interlocutor: "Are you in love?" Delorean's remix drags the song from the bedroom to the club. With a steady house beat, glistening synth arpeggios, and chopped-up vocals, the track becomes less about witty put-downs than unanswered questions: Are you in love? No? Great, then let's dance. Do you think you're better off alone?

MP3:> The Teenagers: "Love No (Delorean Remix)"
[from the "Love No" single; out now on XL and original track from Reality Check; out now on XL/Merok]