Three Imaginary Girls - Tender Forever

Tender Forever set to release quite intense third album for K Records this June 8th

Chris Estey — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 15:14:45 +0000

The story of Tender Forever: Once upon a time there was a young immigrant lost on the streets of Seattle with only $20 to her name. She'd grown up covering sixties pop classics in Bourdeaux, and traveled here with just a sense of adventure. Wandering aimlessly, she then ran into a fellow named Calvin Johnson. Through his K Records she found a place to work on mingling her deeply passionate vocals with mostly electronic music.

Melanie Valera was born in Maurr, France, relocated to Olympia, and is now living in Portland, OR. This celebrated "piano, guitar, keyboards, and saucepan" playing singer-songwriter has stopped the dance groove for her next album, No Snare.

Tender Forever has been known for the great one woman groove attack on tracks like a cover of Justin Timberlake's "My Love" on a 2007 French compilation and also did a brilliantly brittle sonic extrapolation of Mirah's "Make It Hot" on K's remix anthology Joyride. But it was over the course of her breathtaking first two albums, The Soft and The Hardcore (2005) and Wider (2007), that she astonished media like Playgirl who described her as "sweet like Cat Power with lyrics that will make you feel like one tough bitch."

Best of 2007: Erik G's favorite albums

Erik Gonzalez — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 22:12:43 +0000

Sometimes I think it takes me waaay too long to come up with my Top 20 albums of a given year. There are a lot of internal debates and arguments that really have no right answer. Really, you reach a point where all the albums are good but how to rank them gets to be quite the challenge. This year was chock full of good music (not matter what the naysayers might groan). I counted something like 175+ albums worth mentioning in 2007, and that is only a tip of the iceberg when it comes to everything that was released in the year. However, I did whittle it down to 20... well, 22 if you count my 2 EP exception (EP's don't count as real albums).

If you're interested in some sub-lists, like my albums "with apologizes" (albums I didn't hear but should have) or "best imports" or "most disappointing" (hint, the band who made it rhymes with Milo Biley), check it out here.

So, here we go:

#21 The EP's - Two EP's made me happy this year, and really, they would be in the top 20, but it seems unfair to me to include EP's versus albums. They're both UK pop, and they're both brilliant in their own cute way.

Los Campesinos! Sticking Fingers Into Sockets (Thanks to igLiz for this band!)

Wider

Erik Gonzalez — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 05:04:08 +0000

9.1

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000X418Y0/wwwthreeimagi-20/

tender.jpg

This is the second year in a row that K Records has blindsided me with a ridiculously excellent album right when I thought all the best albums had made their way out into the shops. Much like last years Paper Television by the Blow, Tender Forever has recorded a little synth pop masterpiece called Wider. Okay, sure it helps when you record your album with Khaela from the Blow and are wrapped in the swaddling cloth of K Records. It doesn’t hurt to be French, either, and move across the ocean to Portland, Oregon, like Melanie Valera of Tender Forever. Add it all up, and I suppose it was inevitable, but Wider is a great surprise treat for end the year.

If anything, Wider is exactly what you might expect from K Records these days: heartfelt, homegrown, and ridiculously charming. The album opens on “Tiny Heart and Clever Hand,” with softly strummed guitars that suddenly get accompanied by a stuttered laptop-generated rhythm section that would make Jimmy Tamborello blush. This is exactly the sort of tender synth-pop for which the Postal Service paved the way, thick and electric without being soulless. The song itself sort of drifts between a Mirah-like ballad into Bjork’s backyard as it builds the tension, until you feel like the song itself might explode. Right on the heels of “Tiny Heart and Clever Hand” on the melancholy synth pop mantle is “Heartbroken Forever,” whose mere title should make any properly Conversed-and-rolled-jeaned hipster shed a tear. The song is dynamic and captivating, with a cute faux-xylophone line that dances through Melanie and guest vocalist Heather Treadway’s voices. Hearing them chant out, ”My heart is okay and it’s strong and it reels, it can take anything and it takes everything” catapults this song into the realm of champion break-up song space.

“Folded Paper” is cut from the same cloth as the Postal Service, right down to the opening lines of, ”All the things people do at night are like tiny secrets made of loving words and I’m ready to get their secrets in my ears.” Valera does a great job of out-Gibbard-ing ol’ Ben on that one. “How Many” is a wondrous pop gem that sounds like a frantic love song, exposing the fearful side of being in love with someone, not knowing what might happen. “No One Will Tell No One For Sure” is more restrained at first, but it builds the tension until it seems to open up into a glorious sunny field in the middle of the forest. A playful mood dominates “Well I Can Take It,” filled with inspiring little gems like, ”Whatever I feel, I better feel it right, my life is too short to make it bad.”

Tender Forever is a little more aggressive with the computer noises on “Doves vs. Pigeons” and “In the Backyard,” and both songs are driven by forceful and insistent synthesizers and metallic rhythms. Although the songs are both interesting, they seem to lack a bit of the charm of the more pop-centric songs on Wider. There are a few more conventional takes on the disc, like the Feist inspired “Nice If They Tried,” a piano and rhythm piece or the guitar-centric “I’m So Tired," both of which are nice enough but feel a little out of place.

Maybe I am just a sucker for female vocals on top of melancholy synth pop that could have been recorded on my Macbook. Okay, well, replace that “maybe” with, well, just remove the “maybe” and you’re spot on. That shouldn’t take away from the fact that Wider is a breathtaking piece of modern rock that takes the sound of the Blow and Yacht and puts more of a soul into the sound. Not that those bands lack a soul, but Tender Forever have a way of sounds like she’s singing directly to you, one-on-one, and it is that personal touch that makes Wider such a sonic delight.

Wider is exactly what you might expect from K Records these days: heartfelt, homegrown, and ridiculously charming.