I used to think that Omaha, Nebraska must be the most depressing place in the entire world, a place where barbers only deal in black fringes and local tourist postcards depict the town’s brooding poster-kids Elliot Smith & Conor Oburst sulking. Enter Team Love upstarts Tilly and the Wall, a five strong Omaha-proud gang of ex-*Kindergarten* teachers and Bright Eyes merch-girls who look and sound like the giddy sugar-high twins of indie-pop dreamboats Mates Of State, only with twice the members & an irrepressible penchant for swearing. Oh & they have a tap-dancer instead of a drummer. Twee. As. F—k.
In Australia for the Splendour in the Grass weekend, the Team Love prodigies christened the first of their two toff-friendly Toff in Town side-shows with cheerleader cadences, punctuating shouts of “We say Tilly! You say Wall! We say Oh! You say F—k!” with peppy hand-claps and self-conscious glances. It was cute, really daggy, and would seem totally bad-ass to a 12-year-old; which given the fetching stripy tights, leopard print, tattoo sleeves & ripped jeans the five-piece sport on stage kind of sums up Tilly as a band.
From the under-amped orchestral indie-pop jangle of their latest single Bad Education to Night of the Living Dead’s paeon to Jimmy Dean’s school of teenage rebellion, Tilly covered the stage with maracas, tambourines, and all-girl triangle of amplified tap-boards, channelling the wilfully adolescent ghost of the Tilly’s forerunner Park Ave (although back then they were actually adolescents) though bright heart-on-sleeve pop songs and amateurish fervour.
Bereft of the accordions or horn sections that augment ‘Bottoms of Barrels’ staccato taps and co-ed harmonies, each song was uniformly framed by hand-claps, Derek Pressnall’s pawn-shop guitar and barely audible Casio tones, ending up something like C86 for boisterous kids who could never commit to the softly spoken, cardigan sporting stereotype. Front rows pulled shapes, back-rows pulled faces at front-girl Kianna’s ‘Pussypack Gang’ references, and one boy mistook the band’s inclusive air as an invitation to take over the microphone, diss opening act Soft Tigers, and then rip up the stage with dorky Bangles dancing; culminating in what was doubtlessly the Toff’s first ever group stage invasion.
Afterwards the audience mimicked the Ohama quintet, clapping hands and stomping feet until the Saddle Creek consorts re-emerged looking sheepishly at a loss as to what song to fashion an encore out of. Eventually they chose Wild Like Children’s Perfect Fit, a song so buoyant and infectious it could be about a favourite t-shirt if it wasn’t really an account of apathetic friends trying to hang themselves… Oh, I guess Ohama gets to everyone eventually.
