ALBUM: Mint Field – ‘Pasar De Las Luces’

Emerging from the Mexican border town of Tijuana, Mint Field are a duo of twenty-one year olds who bonded over their shared love of indie and shoegaze. Whilst this may sound surprising, Mexico’s cultural suffusion with all things guitar-led perhaps makes it inevitable that at least one group would take inspiration from US/UK trends of the ’80s and ’90s.  

For Mint Field, though, it’s not just about the music – Amor (synths/drums) and Estrella (vocals/guitar) have admitted that “We knew we liked arts, we just never thought we’d become artists as musicians”. Following the release of debut EP, Primeras Salidas in 2015, Mint Field have toured the US and Mexico, playing Coachella, SXSW and support slots for established artists, including Suuns. It’s quite a step up from a pair who could barely play musical instruments when they met. But perhaps it’s that commitment to art that explains why – with debut album Pasar De Las Luces – the pair have crafted something exploratory, inventive, and epic.  

Opener ‘El Parque Parecía No Tener Fin’ begins with white noise, before Estrella introduces the song with robot speech, leading into a bass-led, post-punk structure, with delicately-picked guitars. It’s a cinematic trick that appears on several songs across the album – the duo unafraid to let each song build gently, adding layers to their creation, before letting it fall away again.  

‘Ciudad Satélite’ repeats the style, with Estrella’s crooning vocals swooping over a post-rock guitar style similar to Mogwai or God Speed You! Black Emperor. It returns again on ‘Viceversa’ – with a sunnier, slower take and Estrella’s voice light as a feather -, on ‘Nostalgia’ with its swooping crashing symbols and threaded guitars and, finally, on the spacey, explosive and yet empty contrast of ‘Boötes Void’; the cinematic style drawing the album together in the manner of a soundtrack to an unmade film.  

Other parts of the album look to differing rock styles: lead single ‘Ojos En El Carro’ is a Warpaint-esque ballad that explodes into life with a hurricane of distortion in its final third. ‘Temporada De Jacarandas’ pulls back, initially, into something more synth-driven and introspective, that turns dark at its close. ‘Cambios Del Pasar’ follows in the footsteps of Yo La Tengo!, with the repetitive gloom-psych of The Black Angels hanging over it.

‘Quiero Otoño De Nuevo’ is similarly relentless, but draws more from the non-stop Krautrock of Neu!, whilst ‘Club De Chicas’ is as poppy as the album gets – a My Bloody Valentine shoegaze throwdown, perfect for staring at the floor.  

‘Para Gali’ is a surprisingly cheery number, while closer ‘Párpados Morados’ finishes the album with a mournful farewell. But it’s tenth track ‘Nada Es Estático y Evoluciona’ around which the album hangs. An epic, built just out of guitar, drums and vocals, its opening verses gently carry the listener, before a key-turn takes everything swirling down and out, as its guitar riffs grow heavier and more ominous.

Recorded in Detroit with producer Christopher Koltay, Estrella and Amor say of the album: “We had a much clearer idea of what we wanted and we had the tools to make it.”  With this stunning fusion of light and shade, emotion and distance, Mint Field have harnessed their ideas and tools to produce the freshest, most emphatic debut of this, or many years.

Pasar De Las Luces, the debut album from Mint Field, is out 23rd February via Innovative Leisure Records. 

John McGovern
@etinsuburbiaego

Photo Credit: María Fernanda Molins

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ALBUM: NADINE – ‘oh my’

NADINE is a new project from Minneapolis led by Nadia Hulett (from New York collective Phantom Posse), with members of Ava Luna, Carlos Hernandez and Julian Fader. Following the success of tracks ‘Ultra Pink’, and ‘Not My Kinda Movie’ (previous Tracks Of The Day here at GIHE), they are now set to release their debut album.

With a dream-like, jazzy sound, combining Nadia’s seductive voice with exploratory instrumentation, oh my sounds effortlessly whole.

Things get off to a groove-based, slightly psychedelic start, with Nadia’s thoughtful lyrics easing our way, but allowing us to form our own conclusions. Some of the topics explored are the meaning  of desire through social media connection (‘Not My Kinda Movie’ – “What seeks you out and makes you feel?”), whilst others focus on the changing relationship to church-based spirituality (‘That Neon Sign – “That old way gets me down” leading into ‘Pews’, which is unafraid and life-affirming – “We could go up but take the easy way out.”)

Throughout, the tempo is upbeat, yet reflective. Some sublimely sensual moments occur on the beautifully languorous ‘Plinth’ and ‘Little Self in the Garden’ – a grace-filled lullaby drifting along to violin and piano. The final tracks close the album by addressing a relationship and finding freedom; ‘Can’t be Helped’ is acoustic, almost country/pop, whilst ‘Peace in the Valley’ offers hope – “I love my weight on the wind, a lesson I would learn.”

Overall, this album allows the listener to enjoy its rich musicality and reflect on its thought-provoking content, as it leaves us eagerly anticipating more.

 oh my, the debut album from NADINE, is out 2nd February via Father/Daughter and Memphis Industries. Pre-order here.

Fi Ni Aicead
@gotnomoniker

 

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ALBUM: Permahorn – ‘My Blood Carries My Dreams Away’

Opening with the swirl of looped tape and a flurry of different voices, the title track of Permahorn‘s debut album, My Blood Carries My Dreams Away, blindsides its listener. There may be melody ahead – but the anger and confusion is never far away.

The latest signees to slowcore maestro Kramer’s Shimmy-Disc label, Permahorn officially comprise a duo named Saint Pauly & Jexy Pesic with the former taking guitar, vocals and percussion and the latter bass, vocals and drums. 

Second track ‘Vertigo’ is an appropriately cinematic take for a song named after a Hitchcock classic; Jexy’s delivery is dulcet and talks of being dizzy and high whilst guitar lines fall gently around her voice. Taking points from another psycho-sexual movie auteur, the album’s first single ‘Into the Dreams (Slut)’ is a Lynchian seduction. “We’ll build a floating castle and then we’ll tear it down” intones a Nico-sounding Jexy over a backing that throbs with an ache reminiscent of Kramer’s previous work with Low.  

The album has its twisted takes on rock stylings too. ‘Radiation’ starts with an overdriven barrage of guitars that bleeds into the post-rock of Mogwai. ‘Lynch Mob’ is a darkly ironic ballad built around Pauly’s spoken word vocals; lyrics that talk of the happiness of “being part of the crowd” bring in the bleak sensibility of a Bad Seeds murder ballad, by way of Arab Strap. The Glaswegians’ influence is also present on the suitably haunting ballad ‘Ghost’ and the goth-folk snarl of ‘Peel Me’.  

 

‘Weather’, meanwhile, has the drone strum of The Velvet Underground, buzzing repetitively in the foreground, with both Jexy and Pauly’s intertwining and melodious voices sitting slightly further back. ‘Friday 5:13’ keeps up the VU feel too – although the lyrical subject matter of obsessive behaviour and observation harks back to Pulp’s ‘I Spy’ and their epic ‘This Is Hardcore’.

The album is not without its lighter moments, however – though even they too are couched in darkness. ‘Roll Over’ with its major-key guitars, is a creepy take on the children’s song ‘Ten In The Bed’, while closer ‘Daniel’ is a gently lilting ballad that draws to a close with an echoing shudder of guitar. It leaves the album’s tales of dark dreams and fuzzy reality on an uncertain and quizzical note.

Absorbing and all-too-short, My Blood Carries My Dreams Away is a collection of hypnotic swirling tunes and vocal delivery that carries both a bitter smirk and an alluring snarl. And, through instrumentation as dark and multi-layered as their lyrics, topped with a jet-black sense of humour, Permahorn have created an album perfect for the long nights of winter.  

My Blood Carries My Dreams Away is out on 1st December via Shimmy-500.

John McGovern
@etinsuburbiaego

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ALBUM: Bearcats – ‘No Friends’

Californian duo Bearcats have just released No Friends, their debut album of bass n drum sounds reflecting the ferociousness of their feminism and friendship in eight blistering tracks. It follows a couple of EP releases, split between US label Lost State and Frux Tapes in the UK, hearing them hone their sound and become a brilliant transatlantic addition to the growing movement of female-led punk-pop.

The album opens with ‘Sorry’, with hazy vocals over the sharp beat and warmly blended bass, the verse juxtaposes with the raw and over-lapped half-screamed half-shouted vocals of the breakneck chorus. This is a song weaving along the line of vulnerability and violence, circle pits to either side jostling the track between one state and the other.

The fuzzy loud-quiet dynamic, and layered vocals as opposed to harmonies, play throughout the album building a sound that comes across for the most part as being much bigger than a two-piece and nodding to others creating a full sound with a small line-up – the likes of Skinny Girl Diet, You Want Fox and Deap Vally.

Bearcats do bring in sparser moments across the record, gloriously so on ‘Okay’ where a simple drum line lets the bass hum through your veins, as the drawled vocal gives you the tough love of solidarity – “It’s hard to be a girl today, and it’s all okay” – as the melody blooms and backing vocals kick in and burn through you. A contender not just for album highlight, but as one of the tracks of the year too.


‘Sunday Boyfriend’ brings in the conversational-style call and response dance-floor bounce of The Shangri-Las and, as elsewhere, many of the lyrics reflect feminism, toxic masculinity and misogyny, as well as the phenomenal friendship at the heart of the band.

Mean Girls meets The Craft in ‘Girlcult’ as conforming for acceptance, and the rituals of female relationships bubble over surf punk rhythms. As “light as a feather, stiff as a board” is sung with increasing urgency, reflecting how thin the line between invite and threat can sometimes be, it implicitly brings to the fore the competition women are in with each other through the constructs around us.

The album closes with the deep buzz of the bass and the clashing of percussion of ‘Take Yr Time’, with more mixed vocals and loud-quiet fast-slow interplay. This track – and indeed the album – find strength in not being held together too tightly, nor too polished.

These songs have an urgency and immediacy about them which make for a self-assured debut of scuzzy garage pop bursting with the ethos of Riot Grrrl. If you’ve been digging Dream Wife, Skating Polly, Gurr or Dream Nails then Bearcats are a band you need to add to your playlist.

Bearcats’ No Friends is out now via Lost State Records and available now for download from Bandcamp.

Sarah Lay 
@sarahlay

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