REVIEW - Indie-Music.com  (www.indie-music.com)

"It’s easy to be innovative if you don’t care if your music is good. If ingenuity is your only aim, you could sing along with barnyard animal samples, play the guitar with pinecones and chant recipes while rubbing the rim of a wine glass and you would be fine. But on their latest CD, "General Winter’s Secret," New Jersey rockers The Tea Club manage to achieve something almost as rare as unicorn sightings - marrying an enjoyable, agreeable sound with uniqueness, artistry and creativity.

The strength of that sound, like the source of Flash Gordon’s superpowers, is hard to pinpoint. They have a jaunty, abrasive, Queens of the Stone Age quality, an artistically weird-but-approachable tendency reminiscent of Radiohead, and a lead singer, Patrick McGowan, delivers a vocal performance not-unlike Thom Yorke.

The band’s sound also bears similarities to indie radio regulars like The Muse and Audrey Sessions, although they are distinctly less polished. Not for lack of effort, but rather because The Tea Club is first and foremost an alternative band. Any pop-worthy frills - and there are plenty - are simply icing on the cake.

It’s hard to miss the band’s signature changes in time, tempo and anything else that can be retooled in the middle of a song. Often unexpected but rarely out of place, they appear suddenly like a ninja, giving the songs a multidimensional quality and more layers than a four-cheese lasagna.

Although there is a lot to like about The Tea Club I thought the vocals were the most promising feature and the one that will most set this band apart from its progressive genre peers. McGowan has great range, imagination, passionate delivery and an appealing tonal quality that even Simon Cowell would have to acknowledge.

My favorite song is "Werewolf." It featured all of the aforementioned elements, a dash of Green Day and some Beach Boy style harmonies. That’s got to be a first, and unless Josh Homme, Brian Wilson and Billy Joe Armstrong decide to form a band, it will almost certainly be the last, too.

"General Winters Secret" is an interesting album. It’s progressive. It’s experimental. It’s hard to follow sometimes, but above all, it’s fun to listen to.

Jason Turner"