Twee: Year Zero
In 1981, Dan Treacy was a punk. Or a post-punk, really. His music —simple, scrappy, silly, funny; favoring a tossed-off casualness over precision, and a sweet ridiculousness over punk's sneering aggresion— could only be understood in the context of, like, The Sex Pistols, the Rough Trade label, the English music scene of the time. There was no lo-fi movement, no twee, no C86; no K Records or Beat Happening or International Pop Underground. There was just one middle-class kid with a bunch of simple ditties that lacked the grandeur and ambition that had, previously, been writ in almost any field of music.
Through the punk and post-punk movements, Treacy authored a smattering of rough-and-tumble vinyl singles, under handles like The O-Level, and Teenage Filmstars, before settling into a trio, as Television Personalities, for his first ever album, Don't the Kids Just Love It. The title of the record was as ironic as the band-name, summoning rock'n'roll lore —think Beatlemania— for this most not-rock'n'roll LP. Because Treacy didn't just function with a lack of ambition, but genuine willful amateurism.
Where punk, as movement, was anti-nostalgia, Treacy was happily nostalgic; with a sound whose jangling guitars harkened back to The Byrds, whose lyrics showed an obvious debt to The Kinks and made reference to a host of half-forgotten English motion-pictures and playwrights, and whose spirit summoned the intimate strangeness of Syd Barrett's solo recordings. He presaged the defining elements of the C86 sound and the twee movement; his 'shambling' sound full of cutesy lyrics ("A Family Affair"'s "I telephoned God today/but all I got was the answering machine"), naked vulnerability (the very next line, "please help me"), and proud mundanity ("I went to see a friend to see how she's been/But when I got there she wasn't in").
Diary of A Young Pop Savant
All of this makes sense in hindsight, through whose 20/20 lens we can recognize And Don't The Kids Just Love It as a landmark, an album that has survived long beyond its day. To contemporary ears, its ramshackle compositions, casual execution, and conversational lyrics have a charming warmth to them; offering not just an insight into the life of its individual author, but a sense of familiarity that's come from countless other lo-fi troubadours. But, to listeners back in 1981, the essential amateurism of Television Personalities must've rankled.
In that sense, you can see where Treacy's reputation for 'infamy' was first born. Whilst years of kooky songs, admissions of substance abuse, and stints in obscurity have informed it, here you can almost hear him as punk provocateur; his out-of-tune singing, proudly belted out, feeling far more baleful than bashful. The stark delivery —a monochromatic palette of dry guitar, plunked bass, and scrappy drums— only emphasizes every bump in Treacy's thickly-accented lyrical turns.
Of course, this debut TP LP would have none of its staying power if not for its songs; Treacy showing as much yen for a tune as he does for making constant literary/cinematic/etc references. "A Picture of Dorian Gray" isn't just an extended Oscar Wilde homage, but a pleasing, persistent pop-song, whose utterly ramshackle delivery somehow enhances its innate sense of melody. "World of Pauline Lewis" practically leaps out of the speakers, 30 years on. "Geoffrey Ingram" is terrifyingly catchy.
As much as Treacy was a man before his time, the first punk-inspired lo-fi oddball, a pin-up for future generations of proudly-twee anti-rock'n'rollers, he was, first and foremost, a great songwriter.
Record Label: Rough Trade
Release Date: January, 1981
