Singer Amelia Fletcher and bassist Rob Pursey's partnership dates back more than 20 years: they were both in the late-1980s twee-punk band Talulah Gosh, found a sound they could stick with at the beginning of the 90s with Heavenly, formed an alliance with multi-instrumentalist John Stanley in the late 90s as Marine Research, and have been calling themselves Tender Trap on record since 2002. In other words, they've been around a lot longer than the better-known band with the similar name.
Dansette Dansette, though, is the first album they've released since the rise of the Vivian Girls and Dum Dum Girls and Brilliant Colors and The Pains of Being Pure at Heart-- the new generation of groups that are operating more or less in the barrettes-in-the-hair mode Fletcher's various bands have been occupying for a few decades. That puts Fletcher and Pursey in the curious position of having stuck around long enough to see the revival of what they've been doing all along. (There are a couple of allusions here to the wave they came up with, too: "Counting the Hours" is a cousin to the Primitives' 1986 debut "Thru the Flowers," and the funniest line on the album involves Fletcher enthusiastically invoking the Jesus and Mary Chain's name.)
The funny part is that Fletcher and Pursey were revivalists in the first place. Pursey's described Tender Trap as "a girl group with guitars," and they unambiguously align themselves with the early-60s girl-group moment on a few of these songs. The title track (named after an old-fashioned portable turntable) namedrops Sandie Shaw, Lesley Gore, and the Supremes in its chorus; the "Leader of the Pack" beat turns up in a few guises. For that matter, the two new band members, drummer Katrina Dixon and guitarist Elizabeth Morris, finally let Fletcher be part of the three-part girly harmonies she's always alluded to. "Do You Want a Boyfriend?" updates the call-and-response of Betty Everett's "The Shoop Shoop Song": "Does he have to please you?/ Psychologically!/ Does he have to tease you?/ Gynecologically!"
It's exactly the sort of record they've been making all along, in other words: tuneful, a little bit silly, aware of gender politics. There's a Talulah Gosh-style fast one ("Girls With Guns"); there's one called "Capital L" that you can file right next to Marine Research's "Queen B" and Heavenly's "C Is the Heavenly Option". There is no audible sign that this album didn't come out in 1992-- in its comfortable old fuzz-guitar tone, in its lyrical concerns, in the enduringly liquid curls of Fletcher's voice. They're doing what they love best, and the current American indie scene is finally catching up to what Fletcher and Pursey are looking back toward.
