Hailing from Derby in the East Midlands of England, Twinkie sprung from the remains of the impossibly named Moominhallams. Gigging throughout England (plus a trip to France) since 1996, Moo (vocals, bass), Debbie (vocals, guitar), Dave (guitar) and Elvis (drums) have built up a loyal following thanks to their intense live shows and regular visits to the studio. We saw them, and had to have them on Avebury Records!
Avebury Records has harnessed the best of Twinkie's studio recordings for the band's debut long-form CD, plus the first Twinkie music to be released in the US!
Also, be sure to learn about Twinkie by visiting them at MySpace.
Reviews of Twinkie
True Punk: Twinkie is the kind of band that explores the outer reaches of musical dynamics, by tinkering with dissonance, feedback, and other non-conventional weirdness. Featuring both male and female vocals, bizarre guitars, and clanging and clamoring galore, Twinkie reminds me of a cross between Fisticuffs Bluff, pre-Challenge, Unwound, and mid career Sonic Youth. The guitars get pretty strange and boingy sounding, much in the same manner as Brainiac. The songs teeter on the edge of structure and chaos, much in the same way that did Sonic Youth’s classic “Bad Moon Rising,” but Twinkie's sound is much more rooted in mathematics and postpunk than Sonic Youth. True be told, it’s hard to pin this album down, but it completely rocks. It’s been a long time since I liked a record so much on the very first listen, and I’ve only grown to love it more since then!
Wide Open Road: "I thought Twinkie were going to be Ready Brek kids with pudding cuts - all mittens, marmalade and marigolds. I thought with a kitschy name like Twinkie they'd card-carrying cuties bringing the good news about virgin-love and stripy socks. But nothing could be further from the truth. We get brooding abrasive rock, safely steered clear of emo by virtue some demonic guitar-handling and appealing boy/girl vocals, not a million miles away from Kaito. Loud and erratic, but accomplished and listenable. This Is Your Enemy Taking Over The World is great. But beware: not for wimpy indie kids."
Tone and Groove: "This is a very enjoyable, fun album to listen to. Punk rock at its silliest, the kind you listen to so you can your blues away. You can bounce off the walls with the energy you'll get from this album. Can they sing? That's beside the point. Can they play? That's also beside the point. Yes, they can, and well. However, this is not to be listened to for musicianship, this is meant to be fun, and nothing else."
The National Student: "Hoorah, Hooray a joyous day, finally a full length Twinkie album to call my own. Old favourites from all the dusty old vinyl and some new tracks all in one beautifully wrapped package.The Derby four-piece make one hell of a racket—take rock music, give it a kicking and then make fun of it. Production doesn’t appear to be Twinkie’s biggest concern, the whole thing having a scuffed, unpolished finish but this is what makes it so lovably enjoyable. Twinkie are great, it’s about time people started to realise it. Enough said really."
Tasty: Wonderful wonderful Twinkie. Not only are they the nicest bunch of people you could hope to meet but they also write more tip top tunes than you could throw your left over HMV vouchers at....Debbie and Moo's vocals weave together as effortlessly as ever and every song is an individual gem. Final track TK- 1 is pure guitar pop magic and the bizarrely titled Guess the Weight of my Wife the Horse has a groovy space synth vibe that would bless any 1960s sci-fi movie. Mondomingo still sounds as fresh as when it was aired on Radio 1 by Mark and Lard and you can never listen to enough songs called Aaardvark Barracuda Columbian can you? This is a fine record and you should buy it."
Daredevil Magazine: "This sounds weird, but after listening to Twinkie for a couple of minutes you come into their stuff pretty fast. The songs are really noisy on the first look, but if you go deeper into Twinkie´s music you will realize that the songs are damn groovy and catchy. Last time I heard something like that was an album by Sonic Youth...these kind of albums you have to listen a couple of times to understand, but as soon as you catched the vibe of the band you can´t stop listening. I can´t name you any other bands who sound like Twinkie...maybe if you throw David Byrne, Pixies, Sonic Youth and Macrocosmica together...hell...you should order this CD...I highly recommend this CD...why..cause it's good stuff."
Left Off The Dial: "The comparison to the Pixies of any band in the neighborhood of rock which features a single female backing vocal is the ultimate cliche of music reviewing. Twinkie is a sort of post-punk rock outfit from Derby, UK with an at times haggard, hoarse male lead and a single female backing vocalist. They call to mind comparisons to any number of bands: Liars song structure sans dance-able tendencies, The Exploder (Richmond, Va) with less screaming, a lower-fi distillation of the mood-not-composition of Refused...They pull hooks out of jumbled wails of guitar feedback on Mr. Pierre, and attach a compelling bass melody to the end of the drab Mondomingo. The album's penultimate offering, TK-1, reverses the vocal roles, putting the female vocalist in the lead and ends up coming across as a more more rockin' Yo La Tengo track. The meat of the album jumps moods and styles but is all centered in well played, driving post-punk."
Mohair Sweets: "Jeez what a bleedin' racket! LOUD, soft, tweedle and noodle, BLAM! Surprisingly this isn't on Rough Trade or Matador."
Aiding & Abetting: "Some lovely, noisy, utterly deconstructive rock and roll...I like to chew on the energy of albums like this. Others might like to use the disc for skeet. That's why America is so great. Keep rockin' (or whatever) Twinkie. After the election, we're gonna need all the noise we can get."
Alternative Rock Review: "Flipping hell, what is this band smoking? The Derby, East Midlands quartet veer from post-rock Pixies guitar lines one moment, then pile on the noise the next in unstructured, constantly droning, stuttering rhythms. Using the male / female vocal combination that served The Pixies and Sonic Youth well, Twinkle play Fugazi inspired angular and intense discordant rock with a total disregard for commercial acceptance and more to the point, proper songs...More an exercise in noise dynamics, Twinkie would be a prime disc to scare your pop band loving friends out the house."
Silly Little Trouser Monkees: "Twinkie is English? I think so, and from the sound alike system we have here at the offices they soaked up a good amount of the Pixies. They got some decent female/male vocalizing going on, something that the early Pixies records always had, but the crunch and punch in the back of the head is absent. That's cool, cause they aren't the Pixies and they don't seem to come off as trying to ape them intentionally, just something that seeped in. I particularly like the titles of some of the songs, with Queen being in the title I would have guessed them British for only this reason, I mean does anyone sing about queens over here? Only if its the queen of daytime television or the queen of tramps, something of that sort. It's a nice mix of guitar pop and noisy pop slapped together in an edible peanut butter and egg sandwich....It also sounds live, like recorded live in the studio (which gives it a nice lively feel, ha ha, pretty funny aren't I?) or with just a small crowd at a small venue, I think that works well for the sound and the band. I feel the meandering ways of the Meat Puppets a little to in the way the band approaches or bends around delivering the song. That's not to say that they sound like the Puppets, no it's just to point out that the band is not here to deliver garage rock under three and split, a nice and tidy in a easy to digest pill, nope they are taking some different pills which helps you realize that the best journeys are not always the ones that are in a straight line. My favorite track on the disc? aardvark barracuda columbian because it's got a good guitar buzz chord to it, a little distortion, a funny title and some Pixies like vocal sounds. No they don't sound like the Pixies you dumb bastard. Plus the song is one quick jump, right to the point and gone. I also like track thirteen guess the weight of my wife the horse cause it starts out like it's going to be a nice pop song with a little Del Shannon synth beat but it's a little dirtier than that, but still poppy."
Ox Fanzine: "Am Gesang wechseln sich Angehörige beiderlei Geschlechts gerne mal ab, singen aber auch parallel, während ich der aus Musik gewisse Vorlieben für spröden Gitarrensound meets Pop-Appeal heraushöre - hier etwas PIXIES, da etwas SONIC YOUTH, man kennt das, und das bei gerne mal frickeliger Rhythmik."
