As something of an indie pop scholar, I really enjoyed this! Also, I still believe "Twee as Fuck" is the single best feature Pitchfork has ever published.
I’ve just got back from Wales Goes Pop - where I saw the lovely sight of Radhika (21 last week and daughter of one of the Soup Dragons) talking with Rachel Love of Dolly Mixture.
Our daughter was down the front for Heavenly (and grabbed a set list) - 36 years ago they headlined the first gig I put on.
(I can also claim partial responsibility for the indiepop-L mailing list, or at least for the more goth people on the 4AD list suggesting we found another place to talk Creation and Sarah)
FWIW - my personal starting point would be Orange Juice, Dolly Mixture, TVPs and Marine Girls. At least in the U.K, I think between them they invented the ‘twee’ aesthetic. Although it’s a bit retrospective, at the time didn’t really separate it out from the rockist fuzzy Mary Chain noise stuff or early Pastels like Baby Honey which wasn’t very twee at all.
i hear you - my initial draft started out with television personalities as the progenitors of it all, and i still think of your others as proto to the genre. the article was already so, so much longer than it needed to be, but could still have used a part 0 to explain that. still, i wanted to send people to the twee as fuck piece for the history rather than rehash it, and to pick a core set that embodied the k/sarah 'true' twee of the late 80s/90s (even though they weren't necessarily the foundations). i guess i failed. i'm not an expert, just a lover of the genre!
I think that’s fair - Sarah was really the point where I think it became self-consciously something, that specific subset of C86 that fans and critics think of as C86 music.
Like the difference between Velocity Girl (the song) and Pristine Christine.
OMG. You're a great writer Gabbie! This is going to take a while to read because it's so thorough, and because I keep pausing to pull out old records!
There was a BAND called Courtney Love on the K label. They put out amazing twee and I wore their 7" out all through college. LOL. "Uncrushworthy" was in high rotation along with the B side "Motorcycle Boy". Personally, I think they had one of the highest adorability to "guitar talent" ratios of the gene. The only link I could find for the B side (below) assigns it to the wrong band.
I think New Zealand was having a similar moment with, Flying Nun records, except I they seemed ready to rock out in their own right. If Twee was a reaction to America and UK bombast, then NZ wanted a turn to hit the pedals. And yet, how can one not hear some Twee in this DIY classic by Chris Knox?
I gotta watch this later! One of the things I love about twee is that you can't hide behind "the production". Some of the classics sound wispy but are rock solid.
One of the lesser-known labels is Harriet Records from Boston, which balanced a lot of pre-grunge Boston bands (like Twig, Fertile Virgin, and Prickly) and soon-to-be-underground famous bands (like the Mountain Goats and the Stephin Merritt family of bands). Their compilation The Long Secret is on Bandcamp: https://harrietrecords.bandcamp.com/album/the-long-secret Since Harriet was out of Boston, there's a fun balancing act between the twee sensibility and the grittier garage rock coming out of Boston through the 1990s.
The Simple Machines record label was also a good bridge between twee and garage rock. Tsunami was their flagship band, and while I feel like they started to get really consistently good on their last album, the label is worth a look if you're interested in how twee evolved in the States. Numero Group put out a box set of Tsunami's three albums and has released a box set for each of the albums Ida released on the label; I believe all of those are available on streaming if you want to listen before you buy.
I'm a big fan of Linda Smith, a home-recording artist who is less known than her peers (she opened for the Magnetic Fields a lot in the 90s). Her music is more twee-adjacent--there's an appealing world-weariness that I don't hear in a lot of other twee bands of the era--but if you like the Mag Fields or the more acid-tongued singer/songwriters of the 90s (think Aimee Mann and Sam Phillips, both of whom LS has cited as an influence), you might like her as well! Captured Tracks put out a compilation called Till Another Time in 2021 and has reissued two of her albums. There's also a compilation of her first band, The Woods, that came out on Dot Matrix a few years ago, RIYL Fairport Convention and the more tuneful side of the Velvet Underground.
This makes me kick myself for not including the Mountain Goats on the list, though what era would I have put them in, I wonder? John Darnielle is almost a category unto himself
I love John Darnielle, but I associate twee with a sense of childlike wonderment. John Darnielle has always seemed like the adult in the room in a way that I don't associate with twee.
I remember them putting out cassettes on Shrimper Tapes! You could send away for a xerox "catalog", put a check in the mail, and get cassettes back! LOL.
That made them label mates with Sentridoh (Lou Barlow minus the Sebadoh band) and Franklin Bruno of Nothing Painted Blue.
This live version of "Keeping The Weekend Free" recorded over a phone line still rips my heart out like like a surgeon with a PhD in Daniel Johnson. I don't think proper Twee is supposed to do that, Gabbie.
I’ve never thought of Alvvays as twee but you completely convinced me. And yeah, Blue Rev is up there among albums this decade. Just listened to Cootie Catcher for the first time on your recommendation!
The Unicorns Who will cut our hair when we’re gone? - precious and mercurial but also rowdy. Every time I come back to it I have it stuck in my head for weeks. I’m thankful for this post, I hear a Nico’s These Days or Big Star’s Thirteen and I think…I want more of this but what is this
I can't understand what happened to my message. Ill attempt again. If you were still looking for that ipod cable I believe I got one the charging end is big flat it's from a nano that I got in 2005 I can send it. Email is patrickdehertogh61@gmail.com. thanks for your articles have been reading your posts for over a year and checking out your musical recommendations. Thanks again
Both your comments came through! I worry about your email being out there publicly though so I might delete them?? Thanks so much for the offer, I might take you up on it!!
coming up on K records are albums from Touch Girl Apple Blossom (Austin) and Slippers (LA) which are right there. you already probably know about Skep Wax records, the label helmed by Amelia and Rob of Heavenly, pretty much anything they release i think fits in. but you nailed it with Umbrellas/Neutrals/Jeanines inclusions (oooh, check out Lightheaded as well)!! almost every Slumberland records release is awesome!
i was actually gonna write about slippers for the follow-up post today and then just felt super overwhelmed by how much was already included and decided to skip it. but they are on the multi-decade playlist!
Earlier in this millennium I got excited about indie pop and converted my existing band into an indie pop outfit... and found myself immersed in an international scene of indie pop bands and fans! The UK was the epicenter, but bands came from all over, including Indonesia and even the U.S. :) We got to play Indietracks, a festival in the British Midlands featuring indie pop bands and vintage steam trains.
It was! It took me a year or two of sitting at my computer and making friends in other countries on Myspace and then Facebook, but I was amazed that this online activity led to actual-world consequences.
Of course it wasn't all bliss. Our live shows were a mixed bag, as I don't think four nonyouthful dudes wearing street clothes looked like a twee band. And when I wanted to expand beyond cute pop, the audience had no use for that :)
Love the new cootie catcher album, and had no clue about Twee! But, I have a big gap in music from 2000-2015 Everything I listened to here is right up my alley!
I still remember the first time I heard the Alvvays debut album and how it completely took over my brain. I love that band deeply. I will always have a HUGE crush on Molly Rankin. Her voice is sublime. Great article!
As something of an indie pop scholar, I really enjoyed this! Also, I still believe "Twee as Fuck" is the single best feature Pitchfork has ever published.
I briefly wondered if I just had selective memory, but no -- it really is just their peak
Their piece on Modest Mouse was quite good too.
I’ve just got back from Wales Goes Pop - where I saw the lovely sight of Radhika (21 last week and daughter of one of the Soup Dragons) talking with Rachel Love of Dolly Mixture.
Our daughter was down the front for Heavenly (and grabbed a set list) - 36 years ago they headlined the first gig I put on.
(I can also claim partial responsibility for the indiepop-L mailing list, or at least for the more goth people on the 4AD list suggesting we found another place to talk Creation and Sarah)
FWIW - my personal starting point would be Orange Juice, Dolly Mixture, TVPs and Marine Girls. At least in the U.K, I think between them they invented the ‘twee’ aesthetic. Although it’s a bit retrospective, at the time didn’t really separate it out from the rockist fuzzy Mary Chain noise stuff or early Pastels like Baby Honey which wasn’t very twee at all.
i hear you - my initial draft started out with television personalities as the progenitors of it all, and i still think of your others as proto to the genre. the article was already so, so much longer than it needed to be, but could still have used a part 0 to explain that. still, i wanted to send people to the twee as fuck piece for the history rather than rehash it, and to pick a core set that embodied the k/sarah 'true' twee of the late 80s/90s (even though they weren't necessarily the foundations). i guess i failed. i'm not an expert, just a lover of the genre!
I think that’s fair - Sarah was really the point where I think it became self-consciously something, that specific subset of C86 that fans and critics think of as C86 music.
Like the difference between Velocity Girl (the song) and Pristine Christine.
That's a good way to put it
OMG. You're a great writer Gabbie! This is going to take a while to read because it's so thorough, and because I keep pausing to pull out old records!
There was a BAND called Courtney Love on the K label. They put out amazing twee and I wore their 7" out all through college. LOL. "Uncrushworthy" was in high rotation along with the B side "Motorcycle Boy". Personally, I think they had one of the highest adorability to "guitar talent" ratios of the gene. The only link I could find for the B side (below) assigns it to the wrong band.
https://www.last.fm/music/Courtney+Love/_/Motorcycle+Boy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aY89GQbLcc
I think New Zealand was having a similar moment with, Flying Nun records, except I they seemed ready to rock out in their own right. If Twee was a reaction to America and UK bombast, then NZ wanted a turn to hit the pedals. And yet, how can one not hear some Twee in this DIY classic by Chris Knox?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Gx0eiSoL1Y
That whole NZ subset is it's own universe. But it does seem like a baton was passed from Beat Happening to The Clean or something.
Back to listening!
Grateful for the recs and the compliments!!!
Snail Mail covered the Oly band Courtney Love! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3TWRrxbwz4
I gotta watch this later! One of the things I love about twee is that you can't hide behind "the production". Some of the classics sound wispy but are rock solid.
One of the lesser-known labels is Harriet Records from Boston, which balanced a lot of pre-grunge Boston bands (like Twig, Fertile Virgin, and Prickly) and soon-to-be-underground famous bands (like the Mountain Goats and the Stephin Merritt family of bands). Their compilation The Long Secret is on Bandcamp: https://harrietrecords.bandcamp.com/album/the-long-secret Since Harriet was out of Boston, there's a fun balancing act between the twee sensibility and the grittier garage rock coming out of Boston through the 1990s.
The Simple Machines record label was also a good bridge between twee and garage rock. Tsunami was their flagship band, and while I feel like they started to get really consistently good on their last album, the label is worth a look if you're interested in how twee evolved in the States. Numero Group put out a box set of Tsunami's three albums and has released a box set for each of the albums Ida released on the label; I believe all of those are available on streaming if you want to listen before you buy.
I'm a big fan of Linda Smith, a home-recording artist who is less known than her peers (she opened for the Magnetic Fields a lot in the 90s). Her music is more twee-adjacent--there's an appealing world-weariness that I don't hear in a lot of other twee bands of the era--but if you like the Mag Fields or the more acid-tongued singer/songwriters of the 90s (think Aimee Mann and Sam Phillips, both of whom LS has cited as an influence), you might like her as well! Captured Tracks put out a compilation called Till Another Time in 2021 and has reissued two of her albums. There's also a compilation of her first band, The Woods, that came out on Dot Matrix a few years ago, RIYL Fairport Convention and the more tuneful side of the Velvet Underground.
This makes me kick myself for not including the Mountain Goats on the list, though what era would I have put them in, I wonder? John Darnielle is almost a category unto himself
I love John Darnielle, but I associate twee with a sense of childlike wonderment. John Darnielle has always seemed like the adult in the room in a way that I don't associate with twee.
Yes for sure. I think he's on the periphery in a way that's worth a mention. I can just see how I would have worked him in to the piece, you know?
Oh definitely! Like the cool dad of twee.
I remember them putting out cassettes on Shrimper Tapes! You could send away for a xerox "catalog", put a check in the mail, and get cassettes back! LOL.
https://www.underwaternow.com/ihearstrangemusic/shrimper.htm
That made them label mates with Sentridoh (Lou Barlow minus the Sebadoh band) and Franklin Bruno of Nothing Painted Blue.
This live version of "Keeping The Weekend Free" recorded over a phone line still rips my heart out like like a surgeon with a PhD in Daniel Johnson. I don't think proper Twee is supposed to do that, Gabbie.
Long live Shrimper Core!
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Franklin_Bruno/Phoning_It_In_030807/Franklin_Bruno_-_Keeping_The_Weekend_Free/
I’ve never thought of Alvvays as twee but you completely convinced me. And yeah, Blue Rev is up there among albums this decade. Just listened to Cootie Catcher for the first time on your recommendation!
I like to show these connections that are a little less obvious!
Tullycraft! And as a bonus, their song "Pop Songs Your Boyfriend's Too Stupid to Know About" shouts out a number of other twee groups, too. https://genius.com/Tullycraft-pop-songs-your-new-boyfriends-too-stupid-to-know-about-lyrics
Yes! The Pitchfork article gets into those details. It's a veritable who's who.
Oooh, I gotta dig into it later today.
I know I'm asking a lot of people but it really is so good
The Unicorns Who will cut our hair when we’re gone? - precious and mercurial but also rowdy. Every time I come back to it I have it stuck in my head for weeks. I’m thankful for this post, I hear a Nico’s These Days or Big Star’s Thirteen and I think…I want more of this but what is this
That album is very dear to me
I can't understand what happened to my message. Ill attempt again. If you were still looking for that ipod cable I believe I got one the charging end is big flat it's from a nano that I got in 2005 I can send it. Email is patrickdehertogh61@gmail.com. thanks for your articles have been reading your posts for over a year and checking out your musical recommendations. Thanks again
Both your comments came through! I worry about your email being out there publicly though so I might delete them?? Thanks so much for the offer, I might take you up on it!!
Thanks I'll try to figure out how to do that, or maybe live recklessly at 65. Thank you!
coming up on K records are albums from Touch Girl Apple Blossom (Austin) and Slippers (LA) which are right there. you already probably know about Skep Wax records, the label helmed by Amelia and Rob of Heavenly, pretty much anything they release i think fits in. but you nailed it with Umbrellas/Neutrals/Jeanines inclusions (oooh, check out Lightheaded as well)!! almost every Slumberland records release is awesome!
i was actually gonna write about slippers for the follow-up post today and then just felt super overwhelmed by how much was already included and decided to skip it. but they are on the multi-decade playlist!
Now THIS is an article made especially for me. So excited to dig in.
Earlier in this millennium I got excited about indie pop and converted my existing band into an indie pop outfit... and found myself immersed in an international scene of indie pop bands and fans! The UK was the epicenter, but bands came from all over, including Indonesia and even the U.S. :) We got to play Indietracks, a festival in the British Midlands featuring indie pop bands and vintage steam trains.
That sounds absolutely delightful
It was! It took me a year or two of sitting at my computer and making friends in other countries on Myspace and then Facebook, but I was amazed that this online activity led to actual-world consequences.
Of course it wasn't all bliss. Our live shows were a mixed bag, as I don't think four nonyouthful dudes wearing street clothes looked like a twee band. And when I wanted to expand beyond cute pop, the audience had no use for that :)
But we have some wonderful memories! Like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vimqs2t6r5Y
Great article! I didn't realize how much I was aware of Twee.
Yes it's everywhere!
Love the new cootie catcher album, and had no clue about Twee! But, I have a big gap in music from 2000-2015 Everything I listened to here is right up my alley!
Yay that's awesome
I still remember the first time I heard the Alvvays debut album and how it completely took over my brain. I love that band deeply. I will always have a HUGE crush on Molly Rankin. Her voice is sublime. Great article!
Many thank yous! What a great band.
Do you think The Halo Benders fall into Twee? They and Dub Narcotic are my favorite K Records Calvin projects
oh 100%. i think anything calvin johnson touched counts, pretty much
Shoutout to The Blow, I saw her open for someone (I think it was Ted Leo?) at Pearl Street in Northampton, MA circa 2007. Been a fan ever since.
i have seen the blow. i have seen ted leo. if i had seen the blow and ted leo on one lineup, i think my brain would have exploded.
My memory is fuzzy, but it was either Ted Leo or (I'm not kidding) Air.
Somehow both of those work