Review: Amber Bixby - Teen Mom

As a gen­er­al rule, ​“What a train wreck” is not how you’d like to be described by any­one and cer­tain­ly not the last words you want peo­ple to hear on your debut album. But that’s what’s so gen­uine­ly won­der­ful about Amber Bix­by and how she throws sur­pris­es at you with her com­e­dy. In her debut album, Teen Mom on the Sure Thing Records label, she expert­ly tells you sto­ries, shares who she is (the title is a dead give­away) and reveals to you just how her dark, anx­ious brain works. 

Hav­ing watched Amber for the bet­ter part of her 10 years in com­e­dy, I’m famil­iar with many of the jokes that appear on this album and what I can objec­tive­ly say is this is a fan­tas­tic dis­play of the turn, the tone shift, and play­ful­ness that you get when you see Amber Bix­by in per­son. The tone shift hap­pens mul­ti­ple times through­out the album. She is an absolute expert in turn­ing con­cepts upside down. She’ll nev­er let me com­pli­ment her in this way, but I can’t think of any­one who does this bet­ter right now — there are only one or two on the nation­al stage that do this as well. Every­thing from being a teen mom, to dec­o­rat­ing her work cubi­cle for a con­test, to envi­ron­men­tal con­ser­van­cy (a nod to the 10^th track which I can­not in good con­science type here) is up for a turn. 

On sev­er­al occa­sions, I found myself sur­prised at hear­ing a joke I had­n’t heard before or hear­ing Amber exper­i­ment with impres­sions. My favorite track is Sis­ter-Mom. It may be that as a par­ent, I relate a lit­tle too much to strug­gling to recov­er from a faux-pas in front of your child, but there is some­thing about the way that Amber set the scene and described the inter­ac­tions that made it all feel so hys­ter­i­cal­ly real. I think no mat­ter your back­ground or your age, you’re going to find at least one track that instant­ly becomes your favorite. And despite being incred­i­bly com­posed on stage every time I’ve seen her, kudos to Amber for allow­ing a few breaks to make it onto the album when a rap­scal­lion or two laugh a lit­tle too gen­uine­ly at an open­ing line to one of her jokes. She’s show­ing us again and again how human and frag­ile she can be. What an incred­i­ble skill as a com­ic to share that with us while mak­ing us laugh. 

On one of my lis­tens to the album, I was joined by a cer­ti­fied teenag­er who laughed at the turns, the play­ful change in voic­es, and gave the album an A+ rat­ing. With a title like Teen Mom and now the Mom of a Teen, I’ve got to imag­ine that the acco­lades of a Teen count for some­thing for Amber. Or maybe she is, after all, too cool for that. 

The clos­ing phrase to the album by the way, is uttered by her album record­ing host and Sure Thing Records label­mate, Mac Blake. While very much tongue in cheek, after hear­ing the album sev­er­al times, I feel con­fi­dent in cor­rect­ing Mac by say­ing ​“What a beau­ti­ful, fun­ny, dark train wreck”.

The album is avail­able on Fri­day, Feb­ru­ary 14, 2020. Grab your copy now and sup­port Amber and make it pos­si­ble for her to afford to buy her daugh­ter a $23 steak every once in a while.

Get it at Sure Thing Records or on iTunes/​Apple Music (search for Amber Bixby).