There’s a scene in the 2000 movie “High Fidelity” that introduced a lot of people to the name Belle and Sebastian.
Rob, the owner of a record store, and his employee, Dick, are enjoying a new arrival.
Then Barry, another employee played by Jack Black, bursts through the door.
This goes on for a while before Rob has enough and rips the cassette out of the machine.
I have a couple of issues with that scene…first, I have a hard time believing that an obnoxious snobby indie record store clerk would love “Walking on Sunshine” by Katrina and the Waves that much…way too commercial, way too overplayed.
Second, there is nothing wrong with Belle and Sebastian—although I will admit they’re not for everyone.
They are part of a genre called “Twee Pop”…you may never have heard the term before, but its influence is everywhere these days…and it has a long history when it comes to alt-rock and indie rock…it’s certainly something we should take a look at…so let’s do that, shall we?
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Hey, it's Alan and I just wanted to let you know that you can now listen to the ongoing history of new music early and ad-free on Amazon music, included with Prime. There's a scene in the 2000 movie High Fidelity that introduced a lot of people to the band Bell and Sebastian. But then Barry, another employee, played by Jack Black, burst through the door. This goes on for a while before Barry has enough and rips the cassette out of the machine. Okay buddy, I was just trying to cheer us up, so go ahead. But on some old sad bastard music, see if I care. I have a couple of issues with that scene. First, I have a hard time believing that an obnoxiously snobby indie record store clerk would love walking on Sunshine by Katrina and the waves that much. Way too commercial, way too overplayed. Second, there's nothing wrong with Bell and Sebastian, although I will admit that they're not for everyone. They are part of a genre called "tweepop". You may have never heard this term before, but its influence is everywhere these days. It has a long history when it comes to alt-rock and indie rock. It's certainly something that we should take a look at. So let's do that, shall we? This is the ongoing history of new music podcast with Alan Cross. For continuity's sake, let's hear that Bell and Sebastian song that made Barry so crazy. It's originally from a 1998 album entitled "The Boy with the Arab Strap" and the song is about Seymour Stein, the founder of Sire Records and the guy who signed everyone from the Ramones to the Talking Heads to Madonna. And I think this will probably set the tone for the rest of the program. As goes Bell and Sebastian, an excellent example of a genre known as "tweepop". Hello again, I'm Alan Cross. And while you may have never heard about this genre before, I can tell you that its influence is everywhere in today's alt-pop and indie rock. I think I said that already, but I just wanted to underscore that. It's definitely important that we dig into its history. That history begins in 1986 with, of all things, a promotional cassette. Wait, hang on, let's go back a little bit further than that. "tweepop" is all about simplicity, innocence, intense emotion, and romanticism. There's a big emphasis on melody, too. And there can even be some childlike qualities to the songwriting and performance. If bubblegum music was the opposite of hard and serious rock of the 1960s and early 1970s, "tweepop" is that to the alt-rock world. But without most of the negative connotations that came along with bubblegum back in the day. "tweepop" came out of the punk scene of the 1970s. At the heart of punk was the idea that anyone should be able to say what they wanted, regardless of age, class, gender, or musical ability. And most punk was loud, fast, and angry. That was the spirit. But what if you subscribed to the whole punk idea but were just sad and lonely? What if you were the quiet type, introverted, and caught up in some very complex feelings about yourself and the people around you? You had something to say. But screaming over three chords for two minutes just wasn't for you, it didn't feel right. Why couldn't you say what you had to in a gentler way? Well, the punk spirit said that you could. And as the 70s turned into the 80s, the post-punk era, bands who didn't yell over loud guitars began showing up. And they were light years away from the soft rock bands that clogged mainstream charts just a few years earlier. These bands were cool and arty, and they just happened to be sad romantics who recorded songs they might have written in their bedrooms on a rainy day for an indie label. And their goal was maximum emotion, sweet, melodic, precious, sentimental. And if I may use the term a little girly, here's why I use that. This twee music lifted elements from 60s pop, especially the girl groups of the era. The word twee is maybe how a baby might try to say sweet. The kids into this sort of emotive indie pop tended to be shy, the sort that didn't want to stand out from the crowd. If they had a uniform, it was very plain. They were happy with the kind of clothes mothers would buy for their kids on the first day of school. A lot of kids wore parkas or anoraxes, they call them in the UK. When they weren't after glamour and fame, they just wanted music that celebrated the simple and the naive. For some reason, Scotland became an epicenter for this new post-punk sound. We can look at a band like The Pastels, a group from Glasgow formed in 1981. They had all the elements of twee right from the beginning. The melodies were sweet but lazy. The vibe was intimate and casual. There was no pretense of being cool. This was the first single which came out in 1982 on a seven-inch entitled Songs for Children. There were two songs on that record and this was the A-side. It's called Heaven's Above. The pastels and Heaven's Above a very early example of twee pop. The Smiths embraced this aesthetic completely. Vulnerable, often sad lyrics, check. Confessional songs, yep. Jangly guitars and 60s girl group influences, absolutely. Occasionally childlike, a hundred percent. So for once in my life let me get what I want. Lord knows it would be the first time. Morrissey and the Smiths were the song that went perfectly. For those times when you were so sad, you could only lie down on your bed and cry. Please, please, please let me get what I want from 1984. By the time the Smiths broke up a few years later, they'd spawned dozens of imitators or at least groups that were making these ultra emotional indie pop songs. And bit by bit, a standalone genre came to be as subtle innovations piled up. Now we can talk about that free cassette. In May 1986, the NME, the New Musical Express, one of the UK's weekly music tabloids, had an offer for their readers. For a modest amount, they could mail away for a compilation cassette entitled C86. If you remember the cassette era, you'll know that tapes came in various lengths. A 30-minute cassette, with 15 minutes of recording time on each side, was denoted 8C30. A 60-minute cassette was a C60, and a 90-minute cassette was a C90. C86 was a play on that, incorporating the year that it was available, 1986. At the time, there were four music tabloids, and because the British public was stuck mainly with the state BBC, there wasn't a lot of new music played on the radio. So, it was up to the music papers to discover and break new music. Competition to anoint the next big thing was intense. The NME had tried to seize the lead once before in 1981, with a cassette called C81. And that had been a modest success. But the C86 tape turned it to something entirely different. It was a collection of guitar-based songs from indie artists that were simply, some would say, provatively recorded and featured plenty of self-conscious lyrics. The cassette and the bands it included became something of a phenomenon. It's not much of a stretch to say that this one tape was a big bang for the British indie scene. It was so popular and so talked about that it was given a commercial release that November. It has since been reissued a couple of times, including an expanded box set with almost 12,000 words of liner notes. Most of the acts on the cassette have disappeared into obscurity. You'd have to be pretty deep into British indie of the mid-80s to know about stump the shop assistants and closed lobsters. A few bands did break out later, there were the soup dragons, the wedding present, but the biggest of all of the C86 bands was Primal Scream. And while they'd eventually become famous for being a very druggy band, they started their career being, well, rather tweezy. That's it, 82 seconds. Primal Scream in the years before they discovered acid house and changed their sound. That song and the 21 other tracks on the C86 tape were inspirational to a new generation of British kids. Some will even describe what came next as the C86 movement. A ton of new bands were formed in its wake. The tape even spawned its own genre. If someone said, "Oh, that band is so C86," you knew that they were talking about an indie group that worked within a specific style, combining confessional lyrics, simple arrangements, and jangly guitars. It is such an important part of our Tweetpop history that we should probably play something else from that tape. The muddy lemon drops were from the West Midlands. A few years after their appearance on the C86 tape, they had an album out on "Sire Records," or Seymour Stein again, out of New York, and had a couple of alt-rock hits in North America. And it really started for them with this C86 contribution called "Happy Head." The muddy lemon drops from the NME's C86 cassette from 1986 and the track is "Happy Head." As I said, the C86 movement turned out to be very important to the history of Tweetpop, and we'll continue with that story in just a moment. Back in the late '90s, I was a co-founder of Beetleology magazine. We interviewed people who knew the Beatles and celebrities who collected the Beatles. We're releasing those recordings for the first time, and you'll hear Mark Hamill tell a classic story about meeting George Harrison on a plane. You'll hear Springsteen drummer Max Weinberg talk about what happened backstage the night John Lennon was assassinated and why Bill Maher admired Lennon's political incorrectness. It's a fascinating collection of interviews. Catch our special Beatles series on the Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly podcast feed. Ever wondered what it feels like to be a gladiator, facing a roaring crowd and potential of death in the Colosseum. Find out on the Ancient's podcast from History Hit, twice a week leading experts and academics delve into our distant past and discover secrets thought lost to the sands of time. Join me, Tristan Hughes, as I hear exciting new research about people living thousands of years ago, from the Babylonians to the Celts to the Romans, and visit the ancient sites which reveal who and just how amazing our distant ancestors were. That's the Ancient's From History Hit. This is a quick history of Tweepop, a type of indie music that originated in the UK but now has a worldwide influence, including, and especially today. As the aesthetics and attitude of Tweep came together, two record labels emerged as champions of this scene. In the UK, it was Sarah Records, it was based out of Bristol, and grew from a fanzine into a label that existed between 1987 and 1995. In the air of the CD, most of what they released were on seven-inch singles, making a lot of their roster rather interesting to collectors. Like factory records, creation, and a few others, Sarah Records helped bring an identity to the British indie sound and style, exemplified by the whole "C86" movement. But Sarah was quite a bit more political than their contemporaries. Remember, this is the age of Margaret Thatcher, John Major, and widespread labor unrest. Along with trying to release some really interesting indie music, Sarah Records wanted everything they put out to lead people into the political and social issues of the day in a gentle, non-strident sort of way. The tunes tended to be cute, girly, bratty, shy, and, above all, sweet. None of the acts signed to Sarah became household names, but they did contribute to the Twee sensibility. For example, here's a single by the Orkids called "I've Got A Habit" from 1986. You can really feel the Twee here. Here's another sample from the Sarah Records roster, and it was the biggest success they ever had. The group is called "The Field Mice," they were from London, and had a top 20 hit in the UK with this song. It's called "Wait for it, Sensitive." So that's the story of Sarah Records, as it applies to our topic of Tweepop. In America, the home for Twee-like music was Kay Records. Kay, the Kay stood for knowledge when it came to indie music, at least at first, was based out of Olympia, Washington, and began operations in 1982. And what a DIY operation this was. Kay was founded by Calvin Johnson, the frontman for a group called Beat Happening. Headquarters was his kitchen table. He then partnered with Candice Peterson, who was paid $20 a week. She also got credit for her schoolwork at Evergreen State College for working with the label. At first, most of their releases were on cassette. That shifted to vinyl in 1987. In the 1990s, Kay had something called the International Pop Underground, which applied to a series of records and a concert in 1991. The International Pop Underground Convention featured more than 50 acts, all indie, and all from the new riot girl scene, the hardcore community, straight-edge bands, and other anti-corporate, like-minded groups. There was another aspect to Kay, too, and that was Twee Punk. While the label did issue material by Fugazi, Bikini Kill, and L7, Kay also had acts like Heavenly. Groups like these provided a counterbalance to the intense masculinity of hardcore and the heavy messaging of the riot girl groups. Some were openly queer, too. And almost all of them were very vocal about the homophobic, sexist, and racist elements that percolated through mainstream rock. Again, we're dealing with music that sweet, childlike, a little naive, romantic, and sentimental. Heavenly, a British band, obviously very familiar with the Twee bands in the UK, ticked all those boxes. This single from 1990 encapsulates things nicely. It's called "I Fell In Love Last Night." Heavenly, a British Twee band on an American indie label, with a song from 1990 entitled "I Fell In Love Last Night," another example of nice kids making nice music who were making music for other nice kids. Now, you would think that the Twee sound would have been washed away by the rise of the aggressiveness and grunge and alt-rock in the 1990s. No. And the reason is that indie was able to come along for the ride rather than being wiped out. Remember that the alt-rock scene of the 1990s was positioned initially as anti-corporate, anti-capitalist, punk rock adjacent, and at least philosophically independent. This was congruent with acts that were actually independent. In the 90s, indie meant cool. Grunge and its brother and swept away the old guard, including the heritage bands of the 60s, 70s, and 80s, along with whatever hair metal bands were left. Indipop and indie rock, including Twee, weren't as heavy as Grunge and mainstream alt-rock, but because they had that indie sheen to them. The door to wider popularity opened to them as well. Twee and related indie pop bands were perfect for fans who wanted the cool new music but were turned off by Grunge and industrial and punk funk and scott punk and the rest of what was happening. Twee and indie pop was, well, it was nice, it was loving, it was inclusive, it was gentle. People on alt-rock wasn't any of those. One thing that helped was the female participation in Twee bands. Again, we're talking about counterbalance to the male dominance of the rock world. The result was a non-macho selection of music that fitted very well with some fans' idea of gender equality and girl power without going as heavy or becoming as strident as the riot girls. It was far more pop-oriented with its melodies and harmonies. A perfect example of this is Kub, a Vancouver band signed to Mint Records. Their music was melodic, it had the jangly guitars, and it had such a childlike quality to it that the band created a new genre for themselves. They called it "cuddlecore." I know, sweet, right? Kub was very sweet. They sometimes played shows in their pajamas. They'd bring gifts for their fans, and they worked on being as childlike as possible. For example, they had a song called "Pop Songs Your New Boyfriend's Too Stupid to Know About." Love that. Kub's debut album arrived in the fall of 1993 and was a collection of previously released material and some covers. The album looked like something right out of Archie Comics because it was created by one of the cartoonists for Archie. The record was called "Betty Cola." And from that is a song called "My Chinchilla." You see what I mean by sweet and childlike Kub from 1993? If you're paying attention, you'll have noticed something familiar about all these Tweepop sounds. This style has evolved far beyond a certain subset of indie bands. The Tweep style dispersed and became more integrated with other scenes. And we'll have a look at all that in just a moment. As the 1990s wore on, the Tweepop sensibility went along with it. There were some spin-off sounds too, and one of them was known as "Freak Folk." The best way to describe that scene is a type of mind-expanding psychedelic folk music that's absent of loud guitars and amps. It's an experimental sound that could be traced back to the very late '60s and early '70s. And the best example of "Freak Folk" with the Tweepop aesthetic? Beck. Before we hit it big with "Loser" in 1994, Beck released a couple of indie records that were kind of confounding and weird to those who didn't inhabit the same headspace. You might have also called "Early Beck Antifoke." Here's an example. This is a standalone single from 1993 entitled "MTV Makes Me Wanna Smoke Crack." Beck, an MTV makes me want to smoke crack, freak folk and antifoke with a touch of Tweepop. Tweep is also related to Dream Pop. Dream Pop is all about atmosphere and textures with lots of reverb and echo. But it's a little more serious in terms of attitude and volume. Yes, Dream Pop can be quiet like the cocktail twins and Mazzy Star, but it could also leak into the shoegaze world and touch on groups like Slow Dive and My Bloody Valentine. Dream Pop is actually big enough that it warrants an episode of its own sometime in the future, so we'll leave everything to that time. You spin off from Tweep, at least from my perspective, is bedroom pop. This is a 21st century descendant from Tweep that was made possible by the availability of cheap and powerful laptops, along with free or at least inexpensive recording software, microphones and other associated gear. This new technology has made it possible to make high quality music in your bedroom, a place where you have all your most intimate and personal thoughts. At Tweep, bedroom pop can be very dreamy, introspective, sensitive and vulnerable. We wouldn't have artists like Girl in Red or Beba Dooby or Arlo Parks, Rex Orange County and Soccer Mummy if it wasn't for the various flavors of Tweepop. And then there's the biggest of them all, Billie Eilish. I realize, I understand that this episode looked at some pretty non-mainstream stuff, but it's only by looking at what everyone else isn't into that we get a better grasp of what's going on in all of music. If Tweep appeals to you, there are more labels that specialize in the genre. There's slumberland records out of California, March records from Chicago, there's certainly something to be discovered with the Elephant Six Collective. There are bands like the Blake Babies, which featured '90s alt-rock star Julianna Hatfield, Bell and Sebastian, still very much with us, Tallulah Gosh, Honeybunch and magnetic fields are also worth a look, and the Decemberists tend to appeal to most Tweefans, same thing with Death Cab for Cutie. If you feel like no one understands how you feel, if you're shy and introspective and have so much music as just too loud and aggressive for you, then there is a home for you in the world of Tweep. Any questions? Just drop me a line with your questions through alan@alancross.ca and I will do my best to find some answers. I'm also available through all the social media platforms, there's my website, which is updated every day with music, news and information, ejournalofmusicalthings.com. Make sure you get the daily newsletter, too, so you don't miss anything. And then there's my other podcast, Uncharted, Crime in Mayhem in the Music Industry, which is all about true crime in music. Get that wherever you get your podcast, too. Thanks for watching, I'm Rob Johnston, and I'll see you in the next video. Bye bye.
