Step One

Cat No: FPOP134
Title: Step One
Artist: Tender Trap
Release Date: 20th Aug 2012

Tracklisting:
A-side: Step One
B-side: Love Is Hard Enough (DJ Downfall Thermohaline Mix)

The first single from Tender Trap’s new album “Ten Songs About Girls” (Fortuna POP! 20 August 2012), is “Step One”, which offers obstreperous instructions to aspiring young girl bands everywhere.

Led by indie legend and feminist icon Amelia Fletcher (of Talulah Gosh and Heavenly), Tender Trap also includes Emily Bennett, from Betty and the Werewolves (replacing Elizabeth Morris from Allo Darlin'), drummer and vocalist Katrina Dixon, John Stanley on guitar and original Heavenly bass player, Robert Pursey. With three strong female voices on the record, sometimes harmonizing, sometimes calling and responding, sometimes singing alone, Tender Trap draw on the dynamics of the original girl group songs, but aim to show what happens when those girls aren’t in thrall to the male Svengali.

‘Step One’ is a fantastic call and response, rallying call of a song, laying out advice in a series of steps about how to become a successful girl band. With wise instructions, such as “Find like-minded girls”, “Write a great chorus - never mind the verse”, “Eschew a manager” and “Buy a pink guitar”… Tender Trap show an indiepop girl band how to take the world by storm.

Recorded at Bark Studios in Walthamstow with producer Brian O’Shaughnessy, ‘Ten Songs About Girls’ is Tender Trap’s most complete-sounding effort yet, filled to the brim with resounding backing vocals and glorious fuzz. The album follows the critically acclaimed Dansette Dansette, which gleaned glowing reviews from the likes of Mojo, Q, The Observer and The Sunday Times.

Having recently supported The Magnetic Fields on tour and played this year’s Indietracks Festival in Derby, the band have shows scheduled in London, Berlin and Paris and will be touring the UK later this year.

“Riveting three-way harmonies offer depth and sophistication.” Q****

“More than two decades since they invented present-day indie-pop, with the punk noise, sha-la-la 1960s choruses and shouty vocals of Talulah Gosh and Heavenly, Amelia Fletcher and Rob Pursey’s third album as Tender Trap arrives in a landscape where the formerly forgotten innovators are revered by fresh-faced imitators.” Sunday Times****

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