REVIEW: The Minders, Cul-de-Sacs & Dead Ends (spinART)
- Robin Lapid
If you're not familiar with the Elephant 6 collective, you'd know them by their modus operandi -- they're a gang of like-minded bands that offer up their own skewed homages to the psychedelic pop of the Beatles and the Beach Boys. So you probably wouldn't be surprised at the Minders' signature sound. English frontman Martyn Leaper, admitting to having grown tired of making "modern" sounds, seems to give the Minders a clear decree -- "if it's not British Invasion-era pop, it's crap!" As such, his band offer up very faithful pop odes to those classic '60s sounds, compiling out-of-print singles that were released before and after their debut album, Hooray for Tuesday, into this handy disc.
Cul-de-Sacs is an album of 17 honey-spun songs running two or three minutes each, a graceful length for melodies that, upon extended listens, might give the listener a sugarache. Leaper's nasally, hazy pop tunes will have you harking back to Paul McCartney in his more foppish-haircut days. The Minders rarely deviate from a tried-and-true formula of persistently sunny rhythms backed against a strumming guitar, some background "la la la's," and Leaper's high-pitched vocals filtered through a lo-fi, echoing microphone. Tracks like "Rocket 58" are relative experiments in the genre, with keyboard noodlings and bits of samples melting into the melodies. "Build" and "Chatty Patt" are more representative tracks, swatches of pretty British pop that makes you wonder if you've sudenly time-traveled into the past.
The Minders are probably too faithful to the sounds they love so much, and while cheerful pop ditties are not to be dismissed, there is something to be said about having too much of a good thing. Still, Cul-de-Sacs's mindful tunes proffer vacuum-sealed pop that, in small doses, are infectiously bright.
