The prolific Washington DC pop-rock scene vet Terry Banks (vocals, guitar) launched Tree Fort Angst at the dawn of the ’90s, first as a solo recording project than as a working indie trio with John Gotschalk (bass) and Hunter Duke (drums). East Coast stalwarts amid the weird DC/WA axis that somehow connected the casual twee of K Records to the intense hardcore of Dischord, with riot grrrl bands like Bratmobile and Bikini Kill leading the trans-continental charge, Tree Fort Angst wrote and played airy, summery power pop with the same winsome, appealing, cleverness Banks brought to Dot Dash many years later. In fact, and this is looking backwards through time’s incinerator, a lot of the songs on knee-deep in the rococo excess of Tree Fort Angst — a career compilation recorded between 1991 and 1994 (and sequenced in reverse chronological order) — sound very much like Dot Dash tunes given lighter, less eager arrangements (“Tuesday,” “Hope,” “Tilting at Windmills”). From breathy folksinger simplicity to full-bore guitar pop-rock, the material is strong, assured and accomplished, with durable melodies and lyrical hooks that have real impact. Traces of cool-pop influences abound, but never intrusively so. The rueful but breezy-sounding “The One That Got Away” (originally on the Hope 7-inch) sounds like a Postcard 45; “Save Me” (from Tilting at Windmills) is another standout.
Concurrently with TFA, Banks was in glo-worm, a trio with singer Pam Berry (co-founder, with Gail O’Hara, of the wonderful Chickfactor zine) and drummer Dan Searing. The short-lived band’s three 7-inches were compiled on CD as glimmer by K in 1996 and then reissued on vinyl (with a different cover) three decades later. It’s a wonderful artifact of the love rock era, a marvelous example of the kuddlecore genre — and I say this with all the love in my heart — that valued sweetness over pitch, innocence over ambition. Covers of the Cure, Petula Clark and Velocity Girl add to the fun, but the band’s originals (“One Million Rainy Days,” “Tilt-a-Whirl,” “I Will Remember You”) are no less enjoyable.