Album Review: MINKS - By The Hedge

You don’t have to delve too far into MINKS’ debut album to recognise that New Yorker Sean Kilfoyle fits right in on his local label Captured Tracks. Kilfoyle, who records as MINKS with the help of friends, traverses the same dreamy, ‘80s indie pop territory occupied by labelmates and 2010 success stories Wild Nothing and Beach Fossils. And while it might seem a little unkind to directly compare a band to other acts on its label’s roster, when that label is on fire – with forthcoming releases from Craft Spells and Catwalk looking set to continue the Brooklyn imprint’s red-hot winning streak – such an urge is impossible to resist. By The Hedge certainly doesn’t hurt the reputation being built up at CT HQ, but it doesn’t move it on all that much either.

Given that the band operates within the increasingly popular constraints of distant, faded vocals and hazily-recorded instruments, it’s perhaps surprising that MINKS’ versatility should prove both a blessing and a curse here; Kilfoyle tends to veer quickly from one mood to the next, stacking the more Cure/Echo & the Bunnymen-inflected tracks – see cracking opener ‘Kusmi’ and the deceptively bouncy pairing of ‘Funeral Song’ and ‘Cemetery Rain’ – right next to moodier, MBVesque moments (‘Bruises’) and slower still, virtually instrumental cuts like ‘Indian Ocean’ and ‘Boys Run Wild’. While such a refreshing reluctance to become boxed-in succeeds when it produces a song as brilliantly unsettling as ‘Out of Tune’ (which recalls Joy Zipper’s ‘Alzheimers’), it also gives this album an uneven feel that sadly renders some of it quite forgettable.

At the risk of labouring the comparisons, then, whereas Beach Fossils’ similarly woozy first record simply begged to be listened to from start to finish, you’ll likely find yourself dipping in and out of By The Hedge depending on your mood – something that makes this very decent debut an equally frustrating one.