Tender Trap - "Ten Songs About Girls" (2012) - Video
PUBLISHED:  Dec 13, 2012
DESCRIPTION:
Fortuna Pop! (FPOP135)

Recorded at Bark Studios in Walthamstow (London), with producer Brian O'Shaughnessy (Primal Scream, My Bloody Valentine, The Clientele, Kevin Rowland, Saint Etienne...)

TRACKLIST

1. Train From King's Cross Station (0:00)
2. MBV (3:08)
3. Could This Be The Last Time? (5:53)
4. Leaving Christmas Day (8:42)
5. Step One (13:02)
6. Memorabilia (16:01)
7. May Day (20:01)
8. Ode (23:17)
9. Broken Doll (25:58)
10. Love Is Hard Enough (29:12)

LYRICS: http://www.dvdlyrics.com/lyrics-t-tender_trap.html

"Into this indie pop revival Fletcher and Pursey have sent their most soulful record, the one that owes the most to the girl-group sound, and the one most aware of its own precursors: it's like a response to the mockery -- it's too innocent, too happy -- their genre used to receive. It's also a defiant announcement that they're going to keep playing upbeat music even though they're now informed adults. Tender Trap may sound fresh, even naive, but they know that the kind of songs they play have a past: "Kings' Cross Station" takes its train-track rhythm, its girl-meets-ex-boyfriend plot and the words in its chorus from the Shangri-Las' "Train from Kansas City". Another song finds Fletcher declaring her crush on a boy who "wears his hair like Roger McGuinn", sings "like Edwyn Collins" and loves the 1990s indie band My Bloody Valentine.

"We do re-work ideas from other songs," Pursey explains, to "get more depth. The characters in the songs -- including the female 'narrator' -- are often people we imagine we might meet at gigs, people who are part of the indie scene." Their troubles look back to earlier pop records too. A thumpingly joyful anthem called "Step One" instructs young female listeners about how they might best succeed in rock'n'roll: "Don't play live until / You've learned the A and G"; "Eschew a manager"; "Sing all night and sleep in the afternoon." Is it sarcastic? Not quite. Serious, then? Not quite.

In the most affecting, and the most understated, of these songs, "Memorabilia", the narrator goes through her ex's things: "badges from the bands that we heard every day, / mixtapes you made for me that will no longer play" are "all that I have / to bring you back to me."

Nor is nostalgia the only source of sadness: in "Broken Doll", Fletcher reviews the short, brilliant career of Amy Winehouse, and sings with an anger she isn't quite sure where to place. Should we blame anyone? Should we blame a system? Should we blame the same system that scarred the Shangri-Las? "There's more of a sense of the tragedy of the real girls who made up those girl bands," Fletcher explains. "Some of our songs rely on the irony of the gap between life as described in girl-group songs and life as it's really lived." Like any thoughtful history, Ten Songs About Girls includes both a case against its subject, and a case in its favour. "I don't know if it's nostalgic," Pursey concludes, "but we probably treasure the indie scene now more than we did when we were young."

That would be the scene commemorated in "Memorabilia", with its silent passages, its understated guitar. You can approach this music as a listener who wants to imagine childhood, who wants to keep -- or get back -- the sparkle and sweetness, but you can also hear an attack on the optimism the genre contains: a band, and a kind of music, reviewing its past. The whole thing's a kind of tutorial in all the influences, all the bands and songwriters, that have gone into Fletcher's and Pursey's creations, from her undergraduate life to the present day; you can attend to the lesson, or ignore it and delight in the textures and tunes, the backing vocals, the reliable tambourines, the fuzz and grind of multiple guitars, and the articulate, constant presence of Fletcher's own vocals, making the world seem brighter, its disappointments easier to finesse and adulthood at least a bit less distant from childhood."

(Stephen Burt, "The Guardian", Friday 14 September 2012)
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