Brooklyn's Captured Tracks label doesn't quite have a "house sound," but it is striking how many of their releases share an approach to guitar. Recent records from Wild Nothing, Beach Fossils, and Catwalk all have a similar penchant for long, languid melodic lines over gaps of quiet space. You can add to this list the debut LP, By the Hedge, from Boston indie pop outfit Minks. Their first outing has that loose, lovingly warm six-stringed feel all over it, whether it's used to take a song to its end ("Cemetery Rain") or to fill up an entire track (the dolorous instrumental "Indian Ocean").
Minks' first single, "Funeral Song", was a love letter to the tinny grandiosity of pre-Disintegration Cure. But despite the appearance of that song and the equally gloomily titled "Cemetery Rain", By the Hedge finds the band touching on influences from the indie pop realm. Foremost among these is the Clientele, whose brand of dusty nostalgia has been seeping into new corners in the past few years. Here, Minks adapt the style that the Clientele matured into over their recent full-lengths, which adds a foreboding touch to these love-and-regret-focused songs.
Lead singer/songwriter Sean Kilfoyle also takes stabs at early shoegaze (think the quieter moments of Isn't Anything-era My Bloody Valentine), dark post-punk textures, and Slumberland-style indie pop. This mélange makes Minks somewhat of an anomaly on their label; while other Captured Tracks artists tend to have a style and stick to it-- Beach Fossils' distanced nostalgia, Wild Nothing's Smiths devotionals, the Jameses' brutal weirdness-- Minks seem more content to play the field. It works to their advantage on By the Hedge. The band's one constant is their lyrics, which deal with familiar pop song tropes-- "girls with broken hearts," sunlight and summertime, teenage doubt. But there's always a place for a skillful young band that draws from its record collection and sings about the problems between boys and girls.
