Biography

With Amelia Fletcher's bands, personnel changes always require brand new names: Heavenly was basically just Talulah Gosh with a new keyboard player, and when DJ Downfall replaced the late Mathew Fletcher on drums, the group took the new handle Marine Research. Similarly, Tender Trap was simply Marine Research after attrition: guitarist Peter Momtchiloff needed to attend to his day job as the philosophy editor at Oxford University Press; while keyboardist Cathy Rogers was off in America, hosting the popular cable television show Junkyard Wars, which she also created. This left Amelia Fletcher on vocals and melodica, Rob Pursey on guitar, and DJ Downfall on bass. (Downfall also created the largely electronic drum patterns that Pursey and Fletcher's early songs were based on; on-stage, the trio played along to a CD-R of these drum tracks playing in a boombox on top of Downfall's bass amp.) The trio's first release was the three-song single Oh Katrina in May 2002, followed in July by the debut album Film Molecules. Their second album, 2006's 6 Billion People, featured vocals from the Magnetic Fields' Claudia Gonson, while 2010's Dansette Dansette involved new drummer Katrina Dixon and Allo Darlin' singer Elizabeth Morris. Before their next album, 2012's excellent Ten Songs About Girls, the band made another switch with Betty and the Werewolves' Emily Bennett taking over Morris' guitar and vocals role. ~ Stewart Mason, Rovi