Tea is a hot beverage Westerners hijacked and added milk too.
Twee is a musical genre dance floors jive too.
Tea describes a stomach gurgling time of the evening: tea time.
Twee is associated with small things, cute or sweet…tweet tweet!

Twee music is the honest display of emotion in the gentle wining vocalists tend to use and then the well placed pop which comes behind it. The general tempo and uplifting power of a twee song, with their pappy drum arrangements and jangling guitars, can turn any graveyard into a dancefloor. Sounds like indie-pop you might say? Twee-pop and indie-pop - alike in name, alike in nature – but with twee holding a smaller lasso over its followers. There is a slight difference between indie-pop and twee music but that is an ongoing musical conversation. The general consensus seems to be that being called ‘twee’ is a bit of an insult, somehow insinuating that you’re too sugary, with style over substance. Popular current indie-pop bands like Los Campesinos have distanced themselves from their twee roots releasing an album called Romance Is Boring, and Slow Club, the hottest new indie-pop outfit out there and about as twee as it gets, refuse to perform at a night with the four letter word in the title! It seems the sweet and honest nature of the twee scene is starting to make people feel quite sick.

However, as comes with any form of musical derision, it inevitably creates an underground cultural backlash and twee is starting its revival! The twee scene is already thriving overseas like in the States, with the Slumberland and K record labels being just two egg shells, and Bristol also has its own twee link through the record label, Sarah Records. Now defunct, Sarah Records existed in a small flat up in Clifton and between 1987 and 1995. With cult twee bands like Talulah Gosh, Another Sunny Day, Blue Boy and St Christopher being just some of the bands to fill the Sarah sandwich, co-founders Matt Haynes and Claire Wadd were the sugar gliders of the music world, scattering their fine fragrances across the Bristolian bars and managing to tickle the noses of neighbouring countries who liked what they could smell. And what could they smell? Pure twee, lofi indie!

Twee is an entire culture of its own too. Music and personality go side by side, like conjoined twins, both being simultaneously enlightening into a person’s self, so why not wear a cute, fluffy cardigan with a parrot brooch on it if you like to listen to lyrics about foxes in the snow and girls who never knew you existed? It’s unlikely that you will ever see a heavy metal artist gracing the stage with loafers and a colourful cardigan because he wears the clothes that express himself. The point is, like a peacock we attract our mates through our presentation and if you honestly wear something because you truly like and enjoy it, then who needs match dot com, speed dating or facebook? Just do the things you like to do and the right person will come to you. That is the twee ethos.

Twee: a sweet, cute synonym for a style of music one shouldn’t be afraid of. Grab your anorak, take off your pretension and, in the words of Stephen Merit; “Let’s pretend we’re bunny rabbits until we pass away”.

Kayleigh Cassidy
Illustrations by Tina Golubeva