Dream Diary - You Are the Beat

As an unabashed longtime fan of Teenage Fanclub, and a newly minted Twee fan, Philadelphia's Dream Diary ought to be right in my wheelhouse. The guitars jangle and chime, the melodies are sticky sweet and cloying, and the background singers go "oooh" and "aaaah" in all the right places. But the Fannies can get muscular when they need to, and the best Twee bands stamp their own idiosyncratic identities on the music. Maybe it's the wafer-thin production. Maybe it's the lead singer's slight lisp that turns one of the more memorable choruses into "thweet thweet bird." Maybe it's that creepy Bride of Chucky cover. Or maybe it's the fact that the ten songs on this debut album are virtually interchangeable. This is the musical equivalent of cotton candy. It tastes good going down, but ten minutes after it ends you wonder why you're hungry for something more substantial.