When I Was 12: Is America Ready to Embrace Their Precocious Inner-Teen?

*cough* Hi… well, um, Twee is back, sorta.  You know?

Depending on which circles you hang around in, Twee is either hailed as “punker-than-punk“, or maligned as “music for bedwetters.”  Nevertheless, the most misunderstood pop genre continues to tout cuteness over coolness and has the market cornered on Growing Up Awkward.

Twee has always been the most unapologetically emasculate sect of “Indie”, but it always seems to hover, smirking, just on the outskirts of popular music.  It’s too catchy to ever be marginalized, but it’s just too fey for the trampy-or-macho American taste.  Pitchfork’s excellent essay of all things Indie Pop, “Twee as Fuck” said it well:

…”indie” and “alternative” became popular in precisely the hard-rocking, masculine, centralized form that indie pop usually shied away from. The mainstream honed in on the underground’s hard-rock side, and, acts like Superchunk and Modest Mouse would go on to become Important Bands; acts like Tiger Trap and Heavenly would, for good reasons and bad, fade into history. And there on the television, ironically, was the K-tattooed Cobain, still wearing his cardigans and covering songs by the Vaselines.

So there twee sits, like the kid not picked at recess, rewarding anyone willing to seek it out.

Maybe it’s because of the excellent Juno soundtrack, but twee artists seem to be on the rise again.  The playfull Architecture in Helsinki, sallow Vivian Girls, the spider-fearing Boy Least Likely To, and the self-referential spunk of Los Campesinos!, have all attracted the blogosphere masses in the past few years (and, oddly, a large number of television commercials to boot). Fast on their heels are artists like New Jersey’s When I Was 12 – producing the sonic equivalent of a painfully joyous (or joyously painful?) prolonged adolescence.

I ran across WIW12 searching a now-defunct music site and really enjoyed their aesthetic.  The endearing strum-hook-and-harmony style burrows deep into your head and doesn’t go away — like a library volunteer into Franny & Zooey.

Earlier this year their principle songwriter, Adrianne, was nice enough to swap a few Q&A emails with me before their first non-basement gig of her young career:

Brian B (BemBang): First things first… Who’s in the band, or is it a “swinging door” type thing where there’s a core and people come and add vocals and accompaniment etc?

Adrianne Gold (When I Was 12): First things first… When I Was 12 consists of two main members: Adrianne Gold and Camille Bayas. Then some other beautiful revolving members; our friend Brianne Evans did some harmonies on “Dear Eskimo” with her angelic voice, and my guitar teacher, Mike Yelle assisted with lead guitar. When we play live friends Jenn Diaz plays bass, and Will Samtur on drums. We are so lucky to know so many wonderful people.[ ...] It’s been a little hectic we’ve been getting offered shows and things lately!.

BB: Good to hear you’re busy… I hope things are going well. Is there some sort of tour in the works? When I hear the name “When I Was 12″, I immediately think of both the charming and awkward aspects of that transitional age… was that the aim?

AG: We still have two more months of high school so we’re not exactly planning a tour but we’ve been getting offered a lot of shows lately! I suppose so about the name, I mean we definitely try to be charming and I definitely am a bit awkward!

BB: Ha. Since there’s not much info about you guys online I couldn’t tell if you were in high school, or if you were just channeling your inner-highscooler to write the songs.

Your music, lyrics, production, etc seem very attuned to what I would consider classic indie-pop/twee. That is to say; sweet, clever, and fixated on youthful experiences… even when the person singing may be 30+ years old.

Ha. You’re the real deal, apparently.
What inspiration do you draw from … musically or otherwise?

AG: We are the real deal! We write about things on a high school level because it’s what we know! It’s what we are familiar with. But like I said only until June! We are so excited for summer and then of course for college! We are inspired by so many things.

Camille really likes bands such as: Los Campesinos! Beirut, The Submarines, and Seabear. I on the other hand am insanely inspired by Bright Eyes (of course, who isn’t!) Tilly and the Wall, Mates of State, and Saturday Looks Good to Me. We were actually just featured on an online mix CD, “Birdsongs, Beesongs - Eardrums Spring Compilation 2009″ and so was Saturday Looks Good to Me! So that was exciting to see!

Inspiration otherwise would of course include every boy i’ve ever known, even if only for five minutes. The boys who’s hearts I’ve broken, the boys who have broken my heart, and the boys who have yet to break my heart. Boys in bookstores, coffee shops, New Brunswick basements, and any other place you can imagine. However! I did write about my grandmother, “You Me & Symmetry” is about my grandmother, I love her. We still do arts and crafts together.

CHECK OUT THE REST OF THE INTERVIEW HERE

Sound of the City… literally

Comprised of DJ STV SLV and ABX, The Hood Internet represent the future of the mash-up. Gone are the days where you mix one song with another song just because you can, or because they share a strange time signature, or because they make a hilarious song title. Technology is such (and GirlTalk has shown) that there is a way to mix any song with any another song and make it sound good. The next step, the step Hood Internet is going in, is voluntary restraint for the sake of clarity and craft — in this case, restricting the mix to only bands that share the city they all hail from. Also, it’s my City, so I’m biased.

The best part? It ’s FREE

Geronimo Jackson: LOST Rock Found

The Fictional Geronimo Jackson -- they look like Sawyer's people

Except for a few times in Season 1, when the lovable Hurley would put on his Discman to listen to some god-awful Grey’s Anatomy reject songs while observing life on The Island in slo-mo, the two things I tend to obsess over — LOST and pop music — rarely come together.

But lo and behold, hipster culture dictator Pitchfork Media broke a VERY interesting development a few weeks ago: The story of a fictional classic rock band Geronimo Jackson / real San Diego throwback rockers The Donkeys. The Phork reports:

On a recent episode, the character Jin (Daniel Dae Kim) is heard listening to a Geronimo Jackson song called “Dharma Lady”, and last week, the song appeared as a free download on iTunes. Over on the “Lost” message board Dark UFO, someone noticed that “Dharma Lady” is almost the exact same song as “Excelsior Lady” by the Donkeys …

The non-fictional Donkeys

Well played Dark UFO dude! Pitchfork, thorough journalists as they are, took it straight to The Donkeys’ label, Dead Oceans, to pose the question, “Are the Donkeys Geronimo Jackson?”. The reply was revealing, also, hilarious:

“It seems as though it’s possible that the Donkeys also existed as Geronimo Jackson in 1977. It might be possible that they were part of a Dharma Initiative experiment on time travel … Geronimo Jackson is likely to appear on extras of the season five ‘Lost’ DVD, where they will feature the band recording ‘Dharma Lady’.”

Hahahah. It seems they did indeed. Alrighty then. A simple “yes” would have sufficed.

Anyway, Geronimo Jackson seems to be a recurring reference in the show — on T-shirts, on posters, but most prominently in the scene below. Hurley and Charlie (who could easily pass for clerks at Championship Vinyl) sift through the Dharma record collection and come across the GerJack LP Magna Carta…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFb3Qji9ffk]

Innnnnnnteresting Charlie. Hmmm. You say you’re an “expert of all things musical,” but you’ve never heard of them, eh? Hmmmm. Maybe that’s because YOU’RE IN THE BAND in the past (future episodes)!?!?! Wha? Sounds ridiculous, but why not?

I personally like to think that Charlie is bound to show up again. First of all, one of the lesbians hiding in the Looking Glass told Charlie that the stations’ passcode was the song “Good Vibrations” and that it was originally programmed “by a musician”. That’s a weird tidbit of information to throw out there as your dying words, isn’t it Bonnie?

Also Charlie gets the code on the first crack before he drowns. Is it too crazy to assume that Charlie himself wrote that passcode? I don’t think so. Meaning, Charlie didn’t die at that point, and is sure to have lived and done other things, like, ummmmm, jumping through time and forming a band in the 70s. It’s possible. After all, we’ve seen people we thought were dead come back to life in the show before. Isn’t it possible that Charlie is in the band Geronimo Jackson? Could be.

Also, is it at all possible that Geronimo is actually the name of Jack’s son? Doubtful.

You can down the Donkey’s on music blog Gramotunes.com: The Donkeys - “Excelsior Lady”

Tomorrow is Record Store Day!

Sometimes I wonder if calling albums, “records” will become as antiquated as calling portable stereos “boom boxes”. Eitherway, I’m still calling them boom boxes so that’s neither here nor there. Years from now you will sit your grandchildren down and tell them that, in your day, if you wanted to buy music you had to leave your home and walk over to what was then called a “record store”.

In the near future, of course, songs never heard before or since will be generated and downloaded directly into your brain based on 30+ years of personalized last.fm information. But until that time comes (and while the RIAA and major labels work backwards trying to ruin “Mom & Pop” record stores), music culture is still flourishing at your local bastion of Indie. If you think I’m referring to Best Buy, please kindly close this window now.

Good. Now that they’re gone, tomorrow (April 19th) is National Record Store Day. A day in which, “all indie-record stores are invited to participate… [with] … in-store performances, sales, demonstrations, dances… everything that makes an indie record store unique should be on display…”

There are plenty of goodies and in-store shows taking place all over the US of A. In Chicago, Reckless Records in having some prize give-aways, Permanent Records is hosting an in-store show with Grand Ole Party and Purricane. Meanwhile, Reggie’s Rock Club, a historic South Loop indie staple since late 2007, is hosting a 3-stage, 27-band extravaganza. There’s a bunch more stuff going on, check the list of local records shops participating here.

Stephen Malkmus and Vampire Weekend are also both releasing limited-edition EP’s for the occasion. (Maybe Records Store Day is finally the time to ask someone why an “extended player” is longer than a “long player”. I’ve always been curious).

Not mentioned as part of record store’s celebration of uniqueness is the classic over the counter know-it-all-isms that we all loathe but actually crave. -Brian Howe Battle