In the 50s and 60s, tearjerkers (also known as “teenage tragedy songs” in the US and “death discs” in the UK) haunted the charts as a micro-genre where misfortune-filled, morbid pop hymns ballads, involved love break-ups and the tragic deaths of loved ones, speaking to a youth fascinated by the progress of new motor-speed possibilities.
tearjerker is a one-person junkshop that features small-run DIY screen prints.
Designed with graphic elements found in dusty old album artworks, I deliver screen printed shirts focused on riot & tragedy song lyrics/artists, as a means for us to megaphonically wear consciousness that orbits dissatisfactions, gender violences, anti-authoritarianism, break-ups or grief.
I promote unpopular cult classics from the proto and the post eras of punk, the avant-gardish, the soulful breaks and dances, the folk protesters, etc. This creates a garment-based pan-militancy with a “sampling” based process that celebrates neglected sounds, because the future of music also includes the silenced voices from the past.
Based in Western Portugal, it’s a non-industrial project from a lad with two decades of work booking gigs, writing and doing visual arts around music, working with archives and thrifting, as part of an ecosystem orbiting independent record labels, flea markets, grassroots venues and skint musicians and listeners.
tearjerker also sells low-cost vinyl records with lesser-known music.
