Click to purchase (or download two tracks)
I like the indie pop, and I like record stores. Some years back, there were Mittens, and there were Smittens, as I’d flip through the racks. Smittens had the better band name, but a woman I found intriguing was friends with Mittens. So I saw them in New York, and then I drove up to Somerville Mass to see them, but not just for the girl, they were playing with my friends Higgins. Mittens Smittens Higgins.
So it wasn’t till 2010 that I really became smitten with Smittens. I finally saw them perform, at an event I’d been meaning to go to for a couple of years, NYC Popfest. And the Vermont-based band was as charming as I thought they might be from records I’d heard. The event kind of reenergized my passion for indiepop, first sparked during my WRCT college radio days two decades earlier. So in the fall of 2010 I drove up to Northampton for Popfest New England and wouldn’t ya know it, Smittens again.
Since then, band member Colin Clary seems to “pop” up wherever quality pop is found, playing or just enjoying. Playing and enjoying, a super friendly fellow. Chickfactor, NYC Popfest (Smittens played again last year), and the sadly vanishing UK record label WeePop! Ah but don’t be too upset, the label decided to put out three last records, going out with a bang they said. And one of those records is Colin Clary’s Twee Blues, Vol. 1, and it is terrific. (And you thought I’d never get around to the review.)
Now, I don’t know about you but I have certain expectations from a twee record: strummin’ and rudimentary percussion and maybe riding bikes to our favorite picnic spot and then we’ll walk to the pond holding hands with our best friend who is wearing a sundress. And Colin even has a kitty on the album cover. But the word “Blues” in the title might be a hint that some other things are happening here, not to mention the earth-tone cover, and now that you mention it, that cat does look kinda grown-up, maybe it’s the K Records kitty all these years later.
Sure enough, the opening track “Come Back From the Wilderness” kicks off with standard strum-and-drum, but builds beautifully into something quite different and quite lovely. There’s an undertow here provided by Brad San Martin of One Happy Island (another of WeePop’s closing troika): bass and strings I think and keyboard. Hey is that a xylophone? And some doo-doo-doo backing vocals. It’s a symphony of sorts, with Clary dispensing some hard-won wisdom to a younger pal, before ending in a more optimistic place, lyrically and musically.
Clary then gives out the titular advice of “Don’t Think It Out” before finally being on the receiving end of some wisdom in “Give It Some Time,” pushed along by Brad Searles’ solid, steady drumming. (Searles is also in Let’s Whisper with Clary and Dana Kaplan from the Smittens, and now you know the third and final WeePop release.) Ah, but was this song’s advice-giver expecting Clary to reply with slide guitar? Perhaps not! Like a few songs here, this one ends with a lingering keyboard drone, a moment of reflection.
The mood picks up in the next three tracks: the country shuffle of “Chickens in the Morning” (complete with poultry sound effects), hanging out in the parking lot of the great pop tune “Bad Girls Club,” and 46 glorious seconds of groove in “Boogiepop (Don’t Stop)”—which you now have the complete lyrics to. (A couple of songs later, Clary revs it up again in another groover, “She’s a Motorcycle.”)
Throughout the record, Clary’s lyrics are often clever and consistently sharp (“I like how you think we’re not poor” in “She’s So Bored,” or Christine McVie quoting in the slide-featuring, pun-titled “Duck in the Spotlight”), always delivered in his pleasing, comforting voice. And how can you not like a song that begins with “You’re the DJ, I’m the rapper”?—”Repeat Me” is a gorgeous pop miniature.
“The Girl From the Album Cover,” meanwhile, comes across as a carefully crafted poem of love and music and the passage of time: four interconnected ideas ultimately bring us back where we began—and all in a minute-thirteen.
The album—recorded by Gary Olson of pop heroes the Ladybug Transistor—sounds great throughout. It’s warm but still crisp (warm and crisp, hmmm, it’s Thursday, I know Jenna is out of the hospital but if she’s back at work I could get one of those choc-o-pains hot out of the oven, ok, ok, focus, man! review, finish the review, eat later). On “Atlantic Ocean,” some pretty guitar picking carries us over the gentle, soothing waves.
And how about “I Didn’t Know You Were a Wizard”? The first minute is a bit downcast, anchored by Searles’ militant beat. But after an ominous moment of silence, the groove picks up, slide guitar triumphantly returns (though you’ll have to wait till “Lost in the Desert” for more xylophone), and haunting background vocals…. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say this was a psychedelic jam!
But Clary doesn’t forsake his roots. The closer “Half a Cookie (a.k.a. Your Houseguest Tried My New Lipstick)” is a bouncy indiepop celebration, complete with chiming guitar and smile-inducing organ.
It all sounds real good to me so if it sounds good to you too, snap one up, the vinyl is limited to 300 copies then it will be gone daddy gone, and so will be WeePop, and that girl you liked, and your hopes and dreams, and whatever happened to Mittens, anyway?
Jack Silbert, curator