Los Angeles'
Mini Mansions make dark psych-pop that echoes the smoldering rock and plentiful hooks of its members' other bands: Singer/multi-instrumentalist
Michael Shuman plays bass for
Queens of the Stone Age, bassist
Zach Dawes also works with the
Last Shadow Puppets, and singer/keyboardist
Tyler Parkford is a touring member of
Arctic Monkeys. However,
Mini Mansions explore the glamorous surfaces and seedy underbelly of their hometown with a wit and irony all their own, whether giving
Blondie's "Heart of Glass" a glacial makeover or balancing theatrics with soul-baring vocals on releases such as 2015's
The Great Pretenders and 2019's
Guy Walks Into a Bar….
Mini Mansions was built on long-running friendships:
Shuman and
Dawes were childhood pals, and
Dawes met
Parkford when they went to school in Santa Cruz, California.
Dawes sent
Shuman some of
Parkford's songs in 2005, and when
Parkford returned to Los Angeles in 2008, they planned to make music together. The trio officially became
Mini Mansions in 2009 after
Queens of the Stone Age finished touring in support of Era Vulgaris.
Shuman and
Parkford picked the best of the songs they had already written and made those into a self-released EP they issued later in 2009.
Mini Mansions continued recording, with
QOTSA frontman
Josh Homme mixing some tracks, and they readied their self-titled debut album. The single Monk, which featured a slow-motion cover of
Blondie's "Heart of Glass," arrived in June 2010 on Psychedelic Judaism, and
Mini Mansions was issued by Ipecac Records and
Homme's Rekords Rekords imprint that November. In 2012, the band released a handful of songs that didn't make it onto the album as the Besides EP.
Mini Mansions spent two and a half years writing their second album and recorded it at L.A.'s Vox Recording Studios with special guests including
the Arctic Monkeys'
Alex Turner and
Brian Wilson (
Dawes also played bass on a session for
Wilson's 2015 album
No Pier Pressure).
T-Bone Burnett's Electro Magnetic imprint released
The Great Pretenders in March 2015. Flashbacks, which collected B-sides and previously unreleased tracks from
The Great Pretenders sessions, appeared as a crowd-funded release in 2016.
After spending some time working with their other bands,
Dawes,
Parkford, and
Shuman reconvened as
Mini Mansions for 2018's
Works Every Time. Recorded with
The Great Pretenders co-producer
Cian Riordan, the EP featured some of the band's most personal songs as well as a cover of
Edwyn Collins' "A Girl Like You." The EP's title track also appeared on
Mini Mansions' third full-length, July 2019's
Guy Walks Into a Bar…. Tracing the course of an ill-fated relationship of
Shuman's, the album included cameos by
the Kills'
Alison Mosshart,
Z. Berg (formerly of
the Like) and
QOTSA drummer
Jon Theodore. ~ Heather Phares