Minor Victories have wisely shied away from billing themselves as a supergroup, a term that implies a degree of star power they can’t quite deliver. They prefer the much more neutral descriptor “band.” Still, it’s impossible to separate the group from their other projects. Any band featuring Slowdive’s Rachel Goswell, Mogwai’s Stuart Braithwaite, and Editors guitarist Justin Lockey (along with his brother James) is going to carry certain expectations, and on their self-titled debut they live up to each and every one of them.
The album’s creation involved a lot of emailing back and forth between members before some of them had even met, sort of a Postal Service situation only with a lot more CC’s. “We didn’t record in the same room, or at the same time,” they write in the album’s liner notes, “to be honest we probably didn’t start off with the same vision.” Shared visions are irrelevant, though, when you have a lineup of players with such defined lanes. The album’s sound feels preordained: Slowdive’s sighing shoegaze, Mogwai’s cinematic wanderlust, and Editors’ gloomy riffage are all represented, and in more or less equal measure.
If there’s one thing all three of those bands have in common, it’s that you if you’re reading this site you probably know what they all sound like, but you probably can’t hum any of their songs off the top of your head. That’s not a knock; like a lot of acts from their respective scenes, those groups prioritized aesthetic statements over strong songwriting voices. That sonics-first mindset inevitably carries through Minor Victories, too. On opener “Give Up the Ghost,” Goswell sings broodingly about black roses and the blood surging through her veins, but it’s mostly an excuse for the song’s gothy ambiance, buzzsaw guitars, and moody orchestral accents. “A Hundred Ropes” and “Folk Arp” are even more sweeping, with even more dramatic string arrangements. Everybody in the group clearly knows their way around a studio, and the album rarely sounds less than superb.
What’s missing, though, is the central promise of a supergroup: the thrill of hearing established musicians in a truly different context. Minor Victories’ lineup may stem from different circles, but their approaches are so complementary that there’s rarely any tension or surprise. Unsurprisingly, then, the album’s most memorable tracks each introduce an X factor. Twilight Sad’s James Graham gamely duets with Goswell on “Scattered Ashes (Song for Richard),” a pop number with handclap drums and a blissfully fuzzy riff that imagines a Jesus and Mary Chain cover of “Dancing in the Dark.” Then, a couple of tracks later, Mark Kozelek joins her for what’s essentially a stowaway Sun Kil Moon song, “For You Always.”
It’s at once completely out of place, completely obnoxious, and completely welcome. Kozelek goes into full Benji overshare mode, rattling off a flood of dates and locations with almost obsessive, journalistic detail. “We met once in Los Angeles just around the time of the Columbine murders and Mojave 3 were playing on Sunset Boulevard at Tower Records…” he sings (well, sort of sings), recounting his 20-year friendship with Goswell and its periodic romantic undertones. For her verses, Goswell mirrors his wordy delivery, and though she can match neither the grace nor the clumsiness of his prose, it’s exciting to finally hear her outside her element. Like everything Kozelek has a hand in, it’ll drive some listeners absolutely nuts. But in one song he does what Minor Victories manages only intermittently: He makes a lasting impression.
