Tender Trap / Do You Want A Boyfriend?

Slumberland

Tender Trap are now a proper girl-group! Neither Talulah Gosh nor Heavenly (Amelia Fletcher's previous bands) had this much vocal harmony going on. With two extra voices (from new guitarist Elizabeth Darling and new drummer Katrina Dixon), this great new single combines the harmonies, oohs, ahhs and sha-la-las of classic girl-pop with the stripped-down beats and dirty guitars of the Shop Assistants and The Vaselines. In contrast with earlier Tender Trap, which had a more electronic bent, the current line-up has stronger links to the pop lineage of its founding members; Fletcher and Rob Pursey were in influential indie-pop originals and John Peel favorites Talulah Gosh and Heavenly, who released records on Sarah Records, K Records and Stephen Pastel's 53rd and 3rd. Revered by today's revitalized indie-pop scene, their records are floor-fillers at indie dance clubs and their influence can be heard in bands such as Los Campesinos! (who namecheck Fletcher in their song "International Tweexcore Underground") and The Pains of Being Pure at Heart. "Do You Want a Boyfriend?," taken from the Tender Trap's upcoming album Dansette Dansette, is a perfect chunk of pop, but it's not as innocent as it seems--it celebrates the girl-pop phenomenon, but deconstructs it, too. Fletcher sings in response to Dixon and Darling's increasingly intimate questions about boyfriends, and her answers stray well outside the standard girl-group territory. The punk-rocking flip side "The Sum and the Difference" is the closest Tender Trap have come to Talulah Gosh; while guitars and drums rush by in a blur, Fletcher and Darling harmonize sweetly, contemplating whether to kiss or kill another unreliable partner.

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