photo by Alison Wonderland
Tender Trap has a soft spot for female-led indie pop
Singer Amelia Fletcher just may be the genre's queen bee, as we discover on a journey back through her '90s highlights
By Eleanor Whitney
Published: August 25th, 2010 | 10:00am
Amelia Fletcher could be indie rock royalty. Based in England, Fletcher has been in scene-defining underground bands for years. In the 1980s, she helped define a sound that would later be described as twee or indie pop with her band Talulah Gosh. Her later bands, Heavenly and Marine Research, brought together guitar-based pop, sweet female vocal harmonies, and savvy, feminist lyrics. Her prior albums on K Records were central to the 1990’s indie rock, do-it-yourself revolution. Fletcher's current band, Tender Trap who has just released Dansette Dansette (Slumberland), their second record after a several year hiatus, has brought this sound full circle. The record finds her joining forces with up-and-coming British indie luminaries, rediscovering her musical beginnings, and continuing to incorporate and impart feminist consciousness through sharp, yet tender, pop songs.
Fletcher describes the evolution of her music throughout all of her bands, “We’ve almost done a big circle, in a good way. When we started, we were girl groupy with fuzzy guitars, then indie pop, then Stereolab experimental. We had gotten away from what we were inspired by and from where we were going. In the early days, the jangly guitars were a complete accident and now we are more musically-inspired.”
Featuring backing vocals by Katrina Dixon and Elizabeth Morris from Allo Darlin’, Dansette Dansette has a distinct 1960’s girl group feel, but with a contemporary twist. While originally they had not planned on releasing another record, Fletcher notes that Tender Trap’s members wrote the album together and, “Everything jelled in the best it has in my career." So, they decided to record it, and the result is a 1960’s-influenced, danceable piece of high-quality indie pop. Discussing the album’s title track, Fletcher describes her admiration, and critical scrutiny of, much of the girl group genre, “You listen to these girl group songs thinking they will give you the answer, but they won’t. All these girls sound like they are telling you something, but they are not. This song encourages you to think for yourself a bit.”
While not always explicit, a feminist sentiment does flow throughout the record. “Feminism is definitely in there, but in a weirder way,” laughs Fletcher, pointing to songs like “Girls with Guns.” She explains that while she was influenced and inspired by riot grrrl style feminism in the 1990s, she now feels she relates to the central ideas of feminism more strongly. She also feels the freedom to play with the term. Part of her growing relationship to music and feminist ideas is her work as an economist and as a mother to two children, ages 7 and 4 (her partner Rob Pursey plays guitar in Tender Trap). “I love the music so much because it’s so different,” she explains. Her children can sometimes be found singing along at gigs from the side of the stage and have their own band called Fire Girls.
Fletcher is also excited about some of the up-and-coming bands who share their fuzzy guitar sound, such as the Pains of Being Pure at Heart and the Vivian Girls. These bands also count Fletcher’s earlier projects among their influences. In thinking about the current indie scene Fletcher reflects, “People refer to us as the older statesmen of indie pop. It does age you and make you feel a bit uncomfortable, but I feel really pleased and I love seeing all the bands growing and continuing the sound.”
Fletcher is also enthusiastic about the greater number of women in bands that are gaining in fame and attention, especially in the United Kingdom. “In the 1990s,” she explains, “suddenly it felt like there were millions of bands with girls in them, and then suddenly it seemed like there were none for quite a long period, and I was alarmed by that. It seems to have changed again. I wonder what can we do to make it stick this time around.”
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Tender Trap official site
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Issue #33
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