Anonymous asked: Are you still passionate about twee pop? I think your Twee as Fuck article for Pitchfork is one of the most brilliant pieces of music journalism I've ever read, and I was curious if you still have a passion for that kind of music.

The peak of my being into indiepop/twee was in the late 90s, mostly, and revolved around the narrative and bands that appear in the article. I can’t say I’ve kept a very close eye on things like the Indiepop List over the past several years.

And that makes this question complicated, because I’m not sure what to consider “that kind of music.” You know which acts sound and feel a lot like those old indiepop bands? Beach Fossils, Vivian Girls, Harlem, Best Coast, The Drums, Wild Nothing … and apart from a few exceptions (say, Radio Dept.), these all currently constitute just regular old indie bands. The biggest explicitly twee-affiliated thing I’ve heard in years is Los Campesinos’s “International TweeXCore Underground,” which is one of those textbook twee-insider mash-note songs, about exactly the scene I was describing in that article (“Amelia Fletcher never meant anything to me!”), and has the same sense of energetic brattiness that always kept “twee” from being too … twee. There’s a weird amount of Scandinavian and Balearic-style stuff that would have been much loved by late-90s indiepop kids, too.

I’m sure places like the Indiepop List are down with some of those bands, and championing lots of committed twee-as-fuck acts from Spain or Sweden or Hong Kong; I can’t say I’ve entirely kept up. The purpose I was trying to describe in that article — the slightly bratty/defiant/subversive side of being twee-as-fuck — doesn’t really strike me as something that works all that well anymore, considering that the bands we consider normal already lean toward the sedate and vulnerable. Twee felt liberating when it was the counterpoint to a really masculine, glowering, punk-venerating scene, and I still break out the Heavenly records I got into back then — but these days, it’s actually the grunting and glowering that feels like the refreshing, much-needed counterpoint! Weirdly enough, listening to something like Pissed Jeans or Fucked Up can give me a thrill similar to certain thrills I used to get from Heavenly or Rocketship. (Sometimes bands like that are being “uncool” in the same way twee bands were being purposefully “uncool.”)

EDIT: Now I have that Campesinos track on repeat, and I’m still marveling about how well it covers this exact question, the yin/yang of twee and hardcore.

29 notes | | Jul 12, 2011
  1. grantimatter said: What a weird coincidence - I read this post just as I reach the end of this Tullycraft playlist:http://bit.ly/ogL6XE I always thought of twee bands like them as being little brothers of hardcore bands. index=31&playnext=2
  2. katbeee said: VIVIAN GIRLS = BLACK TAMBOURINE. Why doesn’t anyone else notice this?! (Or are they too afraid to say?)
  3. backleftlitz said: Been meaning to ask box you the very same thing.
  4. agrammar posted this