Monday 22nd February 2010
MINKS – “FUNERAL SONG”
Are Captured Tracks inventing these bands in a Brooklyn factory (Factory!), inking one-album-deals before a profile view is even registered or a show played? With Minks they’re once again channeling Biff Tannen’s almanac, all prophetic ambition, but, y’know, intentions good instead of evil. At least I think they’re good, because they’re becoming awful tyrannical in their dominance…
In some respects, their prescience echoes a pre-internet age, bands not ubiquitous before signing up and reaching out. And in doing so, I guess what Captured Tracks are affirming is the importance of the label, still. The need for both a validated mark of a certain aesthetic and a point of access – a medium! – like Rough Trade, Dischord, Sub Pop. Ah, to be mentioned in the same breath!
That said, “Funeral Song” is not entirely in sync with the rest of their catalogue. Yes, there’s a consistency with Blank Dogs in the swirling synths and the less than glossy production is pure lo-fi chic, but there’s something slightly further reaching here, a more grandiose statement underlying the bedroom roots that stretches beyond either garage rock amateurism or post-punk gloom.
Despite the track title, there’s a piercing rush of hope in the nasal vocal that’s just one part removed from Costello. “So long summertime, I’m not coming back” they sing with unerring conviction, offset against a sprightly new wave hook that swoops and crashes as if that wave could at any second spill over into a ocean, a natural will to something bigger, better, more. It’s in that aspirational drive that Minks and Captured Tracks make perfect sense together, not so much flattering the latter’s foresight as affirming a vision shared.
(Photo: Sasha Litvintseva)
