Tender Trap's Amelia Fletcher Finds It 'Impossible' to Stop Rocking
- Posted on May 27th 2010 4:00PM by Kenneth Partridge
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For nearly 25 years, Amelia Fletcher has been one of indie's busiest bees. She's fronted four bands, all of which, to some extent, have dabbled in smiley, jangly, at times shaggy '60s-inspired guitar pop. Her most recent group, Tender Trap, formed in 2001, the same year the Oxford-educated singer and guitarist was named chief economist of Britain's Office of Fair Trading."It's strange, but it's almost impossible for us to give up making music," Fletcher tells Spinner. Next month, the group, which includes Fletcher's partner, Rob Pursey, on bass, releases its third full-length, 'Dansette Dansette,' on Slumberland Records. The album is Tender Trap's first since 2006's '6 Billion People.'
"When we stopped for a while, it was because it literally seemed kind of impossible, logistically," Fletcher says, referring to the strains of being a working economist and mother of two kids. It's not easy finding time to rock, which might explain why US Federal Reserve chair Ben Bernanke has yet to form an indie-pop band.
"As soon as it became logistically possible again, we couldn't help ourselves," Fletcher says. "We had to start again. Music is continually buzzing around in your head; sometimes it forms its way into songs. Once it's formed its way into songs, you think, 'I want to do something with that song before it disappears into the ether.'"
Fletcher attributes Tender Trap's resurgence to several factors. For one, her children are old enough that she and Pursey can fly to the United States for a few days. What's more, the band recently added guitarist Elizabeth Darling and drummer Katrina Dixon, expanding its sound.
"It completely changed what it's like being in the band," Fletcher says. "We've now got these three-part girl harmonies live."
With Darling and Dixon on board, Tender Trap have traded the sparkly pop of its last album for something closer to the girl-group punk of Fletcher's influential '80s band, Talulah Gosh. In recent years, a spate of new groups, such as the Vivian Girls, have found success with a similar sound, and Fletcher decided she and Pursey ought to get back in the game.
"This seemed to be a time when the kind of music we enjoyed making -- and that we had made in the past and maybe hadn't made more recently -- was becoming more popular and exciting us and others again," she says. "That precipitated us getting going again."
