Song Of The Day 07/04/2011: Tullycraft - Mental Obsession

The French Pop week is over, and it's time to kick this blog back into what it was designed for - proper indiepop. One of the quintessential American indie bands of the mid-90s, Tullycraft are one of the most famous twee bands ever, and are a kind of standard bearer for the scene as a whole. This is obviously mostly to do with the fact that the quality of their songs can stand up to literally any band in the scene at the moment, but is also because they write songs that effortlessly sum up the scene as a whole. 'Twee' and 'Pop Songs Your New Boyfriend's Too Stupid To Know About' are their two most well-known songs, and are both essentially lists of bands the singer likes interspersed with barbs at any genre made by people who don't regard cardigans as normal. They're both great, but to be honest I think Tullycraft are capable of much more interesting fare, and my choice for today's song shows that they shouldn't be dismissed as a bit of a novelty.

They're a band I think might play at Indietracks in the Summer (incidentally, more bands are being announced at the Indietracks website at 7pm tonight - I'm definitely going to be at my computer, frantically pushing the refresh button) and I think they would go down absolutely brilliantly. Everyone would be much more excited about them than they are about the current headliners, that much is certain - a sizeable proportion of the people who will be at the festival probably appeared on last year's excellent tribute album - but they haven't played live for a couple of years now. We can but hope.

This song is from their debut album, 2007's 'Old Traditions, New Standards', and is ludicrously twee in every good way. Apparently it's a cover - there's a brilliant podcast here that runs down a lot of the indiepop songs Tullycraft have covered over the years. If you don't know much about them (what have you been doing for the last two decades???), and you like this, there's a hell of a lot more to work through, most of which is on Spotify.

Tullycraft – Mental Obsession