A month after Sean Kilfoyle's debut LP as Minks-- By the Hedge-- earned comparisons to shoegaze staples like early Creation Records releases, the Brooklyn-based musician was already expressing a desire to move away from his "wall of sound" toward something more direct. Two years later, Kilfoyle enlisted producer Mark Verbos, an ex-pat of the Berlin electronic and techno scene, to flesh out songs Kilfoyle sketched at the East End of Long Island, where he had relocated to break a writer's block. The resulting Tides End follows a trajectory similar to Captured Tracks label mate Wild Nothing's Empty Estate EP, trading vaporous guitars and indiscernible words for the bright, perky lines of new synthesizers and more defined song structures.
Despite Verbos' attempts to exorcise Kilfoyle's influences by making him listen to only Enigma and Chicago house during the recording process, the old Minks that listened to Felt and recorded their first full-length in a basement studio still crop up occasionally on Tides End. "Hold Me Now" simmers with Disintegration-era synth tones (Kilfoyle claims the Cure are just a distant influence, but it's impossible not to notice consistent similarities between the two) and a muffled, insistent kick drum, tranquil guitar tones settling like gauze over the quieter spaces between the lyrics. Other moments that seem like a natural progression from By the Hedge-- the brooding bass and dream-pop phrasings of "Playboys of the Western World," the heavy reverb that haunts "Everything's Fine"-- are more subtle. For better or worse, Verbos mostly accomplished what he set out to do.
You can't blame Kilfoyle for wanting to move on, either. Much of Tides End might have been made as a reaction to the term "lo-fi," a descriptor Minks has often been pegged with. "It's funny when people describe Minks as lo-fi. To me, it's not very lo-fi at all," he said in one interview, and in another, "Bedroom pop this is not." Regardless of whether it is or it isn't, gone now are By the Hedge's meandering six-string textures; now every sound is clearly demarcated, including Kilfoyle's voice, which is actually quite affecting once you can hear it. (It's also more noticeable in the absence of former Minks co-vocalist Amalie Bruun, who added to their debut's layered quality). That's probably the most redeeming part of Tides End, which overall suffers from the loss of Bruun and the "wall of sound" Kilfoyle so desperately wanted to leave behind.
Minks' vision goes awry from the beginning. Opener "Romans" is electro-pop at its most juvenile, topping a mewling synth line with a bouncy beat and the lyrics "Happy birthday to the worst friend in the world." "Margot" is a close second, galloping along at a double-time that's especially aggravating in light of Minks' earlier material, songs that did just fine as they took the time and space to arrive at their lovely, hazy conclusions. The rest of the tracks on Tides End aren't as bad as those two-- they aim for and, more often than not, hit a combination of Smithsian post-punk and the frothier parts of Power, Corruption and Lies-- but they're also not as good as they could be. While looking for something more immediate than By the Hedge, Kilfoyle seems to have forgotten that Minks' original, diaphanous guitar-driven melodies worked precisely because they were a little indefinable: they explored territory too subtle for a traditional pop song. Now that the veil has been lifted, there’s not much on Tides End worth the price of progress.
