Talulah Gosh

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Talulah Gosh
Talulah Gosh (clockwise from top left: Mathew Fletcher, Elizabeth Price, Amelia Fletcher, Chris Scott and Peter Momtchiloff).
Background information
Origin	Oxford, England
Genre(s)	Twee pop
Years active	1986 - 1988
Label(s)	Sarah K
Associated acts	Heavenly
Former members
Amelia Fletcher Mathew Fletcher Peter Momtchiloff Rob Pursey Elizabeth Price Chris Scott Eithne Farry

Talulah Gosh were a guitar-pop group from Oxford, England and one of the leading bands of the twee pop movement, taking their name from the headline of an NME interview with Clare Grogan. They supposedly formed when Amelia Fletcher and Elizabeth Price, both wearing Pastels badges, met at a club in Oxford. Formed in 1986, their original line-up comprised Amelia Fletcher (vocals, guitar, principal songwriter), her younger brother Mathew Fletcher (drums), Peter Momtchiloff (lead guitar), Rob Pursey (bass) and Elizabeth Price (vocals). Pursey left early on, to be replaced by Chris Scott.

The group made their live debut on March 7, 1986, and later the same year released two singles simultaneously on the Edinburgh-based label 53rd & 3rd, "Beatnik Boy" and "Steaming Train". These singles, especially the former, were unashamedly cutesy, something also reflected in the names the group had adopted for themselves: leader Amelia was "Marigold", while Elizabeth became "Pebbles". Mathew Fletcher was rather less flatteringly nicknamed "Fat Mat". Their appearance led to them being labelled as an "anorak indie" band.

For their third single, the group returned to a song they had first recorded in session for Janice Long's show on Radio 1 in August 1986, "Talulah Gosh". Elizabeth Price left toward the end of the year to form The Carousel, and so the single, released on May 30, 1987, was the first to feature replacement Eithne Farry (vocals, tambourine). The single was less shambolic than their earlier offerings, and a video [1] was made for it which was played on ITV's "The Chart Show", giving the band some mainstream exposure. The single was produced (some critics suggested it was over-produced) by John Rivers, as was the follow-up "Bringing Up Baby", a sophisticated pop song that reduced the band's "shambling" element to the point where mainstream success seemed a possibility. Indeed, The Primitives would later take precisely this route to success - but Talulah Gosh never made the national charts. The ironically-titled debut album "Rock Legends vol. 69" was released in October 1987, collecting tracks from the earlier singles and radio sessions.

January 1988 saw not only the release of "Bringing Up Baby" but also the broadcast of a second Radio 1 session, this time for DJ John Peel. What was to be Talulah Gosh's last single, a Ramones-like punk thrash titled "Testcard Girl" (very loosely based on an old Heinz advertising jingle), was released in May. The group split later that year. A posthumous collection of BBC radio sessions was issued by Sarah Records in 1991, and a more comprehensive retrospective was released on K Records in 1996.

After the split, Chris and Eithne formed Saturn 5, Peter joined The Razorcuts, while Amelia issued a one-off solo single, "Can you keep a secret?". Amelia and Mathew Fletcher and Peter Momtchiloff regrouped as Heavenly in late 1989 with Talulah Gosh co-founder Rob Pursey also returning to the fold.