Wish I’d Kept a Scrapbook: A Tribute to Tullycraft

review by dave heaton

The music of Tullycraft – sweet, snarky, catchy, mimicking indie-pop conventions and perennially mocking them – is well-served by this 21-track tribute, clearly an act of celebration more than reinvention or reconsideration. You can hear some of the bands adapting their personas in tribute to Tullycraft’s – like Bunnygrunt’s reverent “Not Quite Burning Bridges”, where Matt Harnish takes on Sean Tollefson’s singing style in a way that really captures the bittersweet longing in it. Mostly though the bands are being themselves, playing Tullycraft’s songs naturally.

Musically the songs range from lo-fi rave-ups (Iji, Moustache of Insanity) to folksy reveries (Math and Physics Club, Darren Hanlon and Rose Melberg’s duet of “Our Days in Kansas”). It becomes a tribute to indiepop in general, with appearances from bands that don’t exist anymore (the Besties) or haven’t done much in a while (Sprites). It’s about community too, in tribute to a band that both thrived off the “scenes” aspects of music and poked fun at them. This is, after all, the band responsible for cheeky songs like “Pop Songs Your New Boyfriend’s Too Stupid to Know About”.

{ http://www.unchikunrecords.com }