Tender Trap/ Dansette Dansette

Tender Trap
Dansette Dansette
(Fortuna POP!)

Twee people. They live in huts abandoned by Syd Barrett, sew their own badges, have extremely soft hands and still listen to the Velvet Underground.
Depending on your cultural disposition they are either insufferable middle-class shit-saps, or the charmed bohemians of eternal summer.
The record label Fortuna Pop operate on the truth of the latter: long a bastion of British Twee, they’ve enjoyed a recent boom thanks to the success of The Pains of Being Pure at Heart.
While the definition of indie has drifted and suffered predicted demise after predicted demise, Fortuna have always been explicit about what the term means, setting down hard markers with their softened janglepop.
Tender Trap summon what amounts to a twee précis. A rambling trawl over the likes of Bearsuit, Wedding Present, and The Softies, their stock move is the Vaselines-like appropriation of the psychedelic guitar, using the edge of the Velvets on which to balance fluffy piles of psyche-pop.
‘Girls With Guns’ bears the unmistakable traces of UK labelmates The Lucksmiths.
This album is in the spirit of Fortuna, but perhaps fails to mark itself out as a crucial twee advance beyond the archness of the playground.