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Music Picks

Join the avocadoclub!

German duo gives Swedish 'twee-pop' a run for its money.

Thom Wong 12 Apr 2007TheTyee.ca

Thom Wong regularly writes for The Tyee's Music Picks column. He wrote the 40 bLinks column for The Tyee, and writes the Thomas in Law School blog.
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'Pain in my heart, longing in my eyes.'

A recent issue of Radar Magazine, a slapdash vomiting of pop culture and "clever" celebrity writing, described the latest fashion craze where men wear ties and women wear dresses as tweemo. Like many who read the Radar article, I found myself nodding and agreeing, and finally confronting myself in the mirror to find that I was such a tweemo, in all my Earl-Grey-drinking, Wes-Anderson-watching glory. And frankly, I don't care. Earl Grey is delicious, Wes Anderson a genius, and ties, especially two-dollar vintage YSL ties from Salvation Army bargain bins, take my regular look and add an "ir" to the front. Besides, I'd rather be a tweemo than a hipstaskarnival clown.

Germany's avocadoclub (lower-case only please) feels my tweemo angst, or in the words of lead singer Bendrik Muhs, "there was pain in my heart and longing in my eyes." The sound of someone leaving you tends to be an echo, and all of that heartache is found in "Don't Turn Cold On Me ('Cause I Left You in the Rain)." Any song that features a girl in her summer dress HAS to end in tears.

But don't think it's all about crying with these fun-loving Germans! "Too Much Space To Walk Away" starts with Phil Spector drums, then kicks in Lou Reed vocals before turning into a perfect summer driving song. Save this one for the first road trip that lets you put the top down. And every so often in both songs the last line won't rhyme, as if to say "Look, we're not fooling around -- this stuff is messy, like your heart!"

For a slight change of pace, try their perfectly titled EP, Girls Wear Deodorant These Days. The "Dirty Sheet Complacency" showcases some delicately plunked electric piano, a la Casio Rapman. Speaking of the Rapman, I recently bought one for my girlfriend -- if you like your keyboard to come with a voice effector, built-in scratch pad, and delphonic sound (I might have made that last one up), the Casio Rapman is the machine for you.

More avocadoclub MP3s and videos can be found here.

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