Portland's
Minders have made a modest career out of constructing
Beatlesque pop albums with the style of the Elephant 6 collective and the energy of
Guided by Voices. Their 2003
The Future's Always Perfect EP comes after a period of lineup shuffles (most notably the switch by Rebecca Cole from drums to keyboards) and work on constructing a home studio, and finds the band stripping its sound down to live-sounding guitar, bass, and drums and then layers Cole's keyboards over the top, where they collide with Martyn Leaper's confident vocals in an exciting and sonically adventurous fashion. Leaper's voice is as strong as ever, sounding like
Robert Pollard without the drunken wobble and with an added dose of tunefulness. Cole's sweet voice complements Leaper's perfectly. The vocal harmonies on the disc are sparsely used but very effective. Her lead vocal on the spare and quirky "Hahaha" is one of the disc's high points. Another is the humming rocker "Go Wave Your Wand," which boasts a killer hook and an unusually aggressive guitar solo. Thanks to Cole's vintage synths and the jerky rhythms of songs like "28X," the record has a new wave feel. "It's So Hard" even sounds like an outtake from a less complicated and angry "This Year's Model." Not that the pastoral E6 feel has disappeared entirely; the quiet "All the Way Round" and the quirky ballad "Jealous Baby" retain the twisted melodicism and lo-fi, all-but-the-kitchen-sink approach of the band's earlier efforts.
The Minders were in danger of digging themselves a pretty deep rut if they had just come back with another record that followed their blueprint. Luckily for them and for their fans, the band found a way to break from the past without totally renouncing it. Oh, and they made a really strong record too. ~ Tim Sendra