Tender Trap - Do You Want A Boyfriend? / The Sum And The Difference

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3...according to our Brian on Sun 14 Jan, 2007.

Oh Amelia, Amelia. Once I had a dream I had stealed ya. From right under the nose of all the other slavering indie kids who wore hairslides with flowers affixed, bearing your face in the centre and had your name carved into their arms with plastic yogurt spoons. I wished you could have sat in my room singing 'Talulah Gosh' & 'Shallow' from Dawn 'till dusk. Now I'm not too bovvered, like. They can have you back. Not that I don't like you anymore, or think your band is not as good as the earlier ones but I'm a little confused about a 44 year old woman trilling 'Do You Want a Boyfriend?' at me over a regulation churn of jangly guitars & head noddy drums. Still, 25 years in the music biz love, not bad mileage that.....

White vinyl single. For Fans Of: The Vivian Girls, The Shop Assistants, Sarah Records, 60s Girlgroups. 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 Morris (also of Allo Darlin’) 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 Morris harmonize sweetly, contemplating whether to kiss or kill another unreliable partner. Live : Jul 3 The Hope, Brighton 13th The Wheatsheaf, Oxford 14th Rough Trade East Instore, London - More UK dates in July to be confirmed. Press : Blog press for download-only singles “Fireworks” and “Girls With Guns”, Plays on BBC 6music (Gideon Coe / Marc Riley), Amelia Fletcher interviewed by Alan Johnson MP and ex-Home Secretary for BBC Radio 4 programme Rock Star about his (unfulfilled) ambition to make it as a rock star. Amelia is interviewed as someone that has had success but decided to go on to other things (she’s the Chief Economist at the Office of Fair Trading).

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