Minks - By The Hedge

Minks record label describes them as "Like if Robert Smith gave birth to a baby, and the baby was actually a cassette of Cure demos that had a lot more staying power than actual Cure demos", elsewhere I've seen them describes as "gothic pop"; their album has songs called Funeral Song and Cemetary Rain on it. You know what to expect now, right?

Except perhaps not, because if Minks share anything with the Cure it's the 6 string jangle that permeates the album, certainly there's nothing as dark and gloomy as comparisons to the Cure might draw (and yes I know the Cure didn't just do gothy) and the vocal is not really Robert Smith either. Yeah there is darkness here, but it flits in the corners, kept at bay by the warmth of the music. To draw a poorly defined metaphor, the music is akin to the weak light after a rain shower, rather then the promise of rain itself. Beyond that if comparisons can be drawn to bands of the past it's more likely to be New Order or My Bloody Valentine. There are echoes of Shields sonic cathedral here (but more a sonic cottage perhaps), elements of shoegaze and shimmer give the songs a rare beauty.

Yet there's more than that, the band have been called indiepop too, and yeah you can draw a line between Minks and their label mates Wild Nothing, but in the fuzz and brittle jangle there's the sound of The Pains At Being Pure at Heart too; cf 'Cemetary Rain'. You might want to mention The Clientele when drawing comparisons too. For me though, the sound they make is akin to Sarah records indiepop, in the jangle and the spaces between songs you can hear The Fieldmice or Another Sunny Day, not in terms of lyrics, but in terms of FEEL, the best Sarah records were evocative, rendolent of a moment, a thought, a soft hand on a cold evening. Minks have that, it's one of the things that makes them special.

By now perhaps, you get the sense that Minks are hard to pin down, that or they're just an amalgamation of influences and nothing more; not true. They take these elements and twist them, knowing when to sound like one thing, when another, and yet create something new from the bare bones. Perhaps it's by design, perhaps it's luck, but by creating a record that sounds like it could have been made 20 years ago and that also fits in with the music scene right now, Minks have managed to make an album that at once sounds timeless. It's an impressive thing to pull off with a debut record.

It's impossible really to convey the record through words (as it is with almost any piece of music) so I'd encourage you to listen to the record. It's on spotify if you have the capabilities to listen there. Otherwise you can give them a listen on their myspace page Or there's some links below.

Minks - Funeral Song


Minks - Cemetary Rain

Minks - Ophelia