Tender Trap, 6 Billion People

reviewed by dave heaton

Amelia Fletcher might not be a household name popping up on Entertainment Tonight and the Billboard charts and whatnot, but her legacy as a pop songwriter and musician is hard to match. With Talulah Gosh, Heavenly, Marine Research, and now Tender Trap, she's left quite the legacy of superbly written songs, witty and moving and stylish and smart.

Coming four years after their excellent debut Film Molecules, the second Tender Trap album 6 Billion People is another fantastic addition to Amelia Fletcher's lengthy discography. Not just filled with catchy cute-pop melodies – though it has those, most definitely – it's an album of love songs that truly get across the complexity of love. Her songwriting is again something to be in awe of; she has a way of being playful but also not, of kidding on the surface and communicating something more serious underneath.

The album opens with the title track, a tune about the slim chances anyone has of meeting their soul mate that's cheeky and has verve but is also a real portrait of loneliness. The catchy first single "Talking Backwards," which includes a clever backwards-sung line, at first seems like a simple kiddie crush song, but the last verse is this: "Scratching his name into my arm hid by my sleeve / I'm starving myself / disguise the hurting hole beneath."

Similarly, "I Would Die" peeks into the darker impulses below the surface of other people, and how unknowable people really are, with its line "When you lie asleep / private dreams you keep / I'm sure I heard you / whisper murder". There's interior/exterior dialogues brought to the service too in the well-titled "(I Always Love You When) I'm Leaving You."

These songs are rich and complicated like that. They explore a myriad of inner fears and hopes while also being fun, catchy, completely pop. They often take on a slow pace, get dreamy with the synthesizers. But at the same time they bounce, jump, move endlessly upward and forward. And they often end with questions, not truths, like this: "I will be there / but I won't be there / I won't ever know if you care." To write songs that are that open-ended while sounding compact and completely attractive to the ear, that's a special talent.

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