AEM082 MiniBoone

There’s a part in the Bea­t­les anthol­ogy in which Paul talks about the scarcity of resources for young rock musi­cians in 1950s Liv­er­pool. With­out money to pur­chase records, and with­out record stores will­ing to carry rock ‘n’ roll music, the pre-Fab 4 sat with their ears glued to the radio with the hope that they’d catch a snip­pet of some­thing hip. Times have changed, the internet’s here, and with it is a ridicu­lous over­sat­u­ra­tion of musi­cal con­tent in every style and genre imag­in­able. Not only is buy­ing music a thing of the past, but get­ting peo­ple to lis­ten to a whole song (let alone an entire album) is becom­ing increas­ingly dif­fi­cult. There are bands and labels out there mak­ing unbe­liev­able music that lit­er­ally can’t even give their records away. By now you’re prob­a­bly won­der­ing why I’m open­ing a per­fectly nor­mal review with this dreary state of the union non­sense. Well, because I’m an ass­hole, and Mini­Boone almost didn’t make it on The Ampeater Review.

I open every song we receive hop­ing and expect­ing it to be the sin­gle great­est thing I’ve ever heard, a mag­num opus, the hid­den gem of our gen­er­a­tion. Really, I do. Besides, it’s a small let­down when a sub­mis­sion isn’t up to par, and it’s a huge thrill when I dis­cover some­thing new and excit­ing. When Mini­Boone hit my inbox,  I opened A-side “Devil In Your Eyes” and lis­tened. I lis­tened some more. I lis­tened, and that lit­tle voice that makes me do things like start fires and reject bands started warm­ing up. Uh oh. But just as I made a move to trash the whole oper­a­tion the song began to build…and build…and then at 1:11, it erupted into one of the most exu­ber­ant, spon­ta­neous, and wholly enjoy­able cho­ruses I’ve heard from a rock band in ages, maybe ever.  What was I think­ing, to have come so close to send­ing Mini­Boone to the nether regions of my recy­cling bin? Is this what we’ve come to? I don’t want to be respon­si­ble for the death of music, and well, I think I came mighty close just there. Mini­Boone, I’m sorry, you guys are amaz­ing and as my penance for almost giv­ing you the axe, I’d like to make sure the whole world knows what bril­liant music you’re making.

So let’s back it up a bit. It’s not that Miniboone’s “Devil In Your Eyes” is a lame ven­ture with a redemp­tive chorus–not at all. That’s just how Mini­Boone rolls. They come from a world where the Talk­ing Heads reign supreme, and where peo­ple have atten­tion spans that last longer than 30 sec­onds. I think it’s the same place Frank Zappa has a sum­mer home, wher­ever it is. Craig Barnes (Gui­tar, Key­board Vocals), James Keary (Gui­tar, Key­board Vocals), Doug Schrashun (Gui­tar, Key­board Vocals), Sam Rich (Bass), and Tay­lor Gabriels (Drums) excel at pack­ag­ing remark­able musi­cal com­plex­i­ties into fever­ishly catchy pop songs, so much so that it’s easy to breeze through their 7-inch with­out fully appre­ci­at­ing how dif­fi­cult it is to pro­duce some­thing both quirky and impetu­ous that doesn’t nec­es­sar­ily come across as such. “Devil In Your Eyes” should have a lit­tle sticker on it that says “Cau­tion: This song comes spring-loaded.” Each uni­son cho­rus pro­pels the next verse for­ward with such energy that by 2:23 it’s got no place left to go and pulls a Layla, drop­ping us off into an extended gui­tar solo and outro that’s at least as mem­o­rable as the song itself. The now infa­mous first minute of this song (remem­ber, the one I didn’t like?) makes sense now–it’s a slow build into that first cho­rus, after which the elas­tic snaps and flings us towards the outro at break­neck speeds. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that the song needs a slow build, it needs a minute to warm up, like cold pizza, or a space shut­tle. Yeah…a space shut­tle. Just give it that minute and you’ll be damn glad you did.

I haven’t seen Mini­Boone live (yet), but I imag­ine the expe­ri­ence would be some­thing like free­bas­ing cocaine while doing wind­sprints on a roller­coaster. The most excit­ing music isn’t always the most fre­netic, and Mini­Boone is a case in point. Side B, “Cool Kids Cut Out of the Heart Itself” is an exper­i­ment in highly con­trolled cat­a­stro­phe, alter­nat­ing between sec­tions of total dis­tor­tion and vocal stop­gaps for momen­tary com­po­sure. Mini­Boone man­ages to over­whelm the senses with­out tak­ing up every last inch of the musi­cal soundscape–there’s space to breathe, to pon­der the music as it’s hap­pen­ing. But not too much. It’s a care­fully (and per­fectly) con­structed bal­ance that most bands strug­gle to find and never quite achieve. Like “Devil In Your Eyes,” “Cool Kids” over­heats by 1:04, and takes its time build­ing back up to a grand finale. It might be a for­mula (it’s hard to tell on these 7-inches), but if it is, it’s a great one. MiniBoone’s music doesn’t inspire me to take up paint­ing, it doesn’t move me to tears, but it’s not try­ing to. It’s doing some­thing very sim­ple, very hon­est, and very important–inspiring joy. This is music to make sunny days even sun­nier, and rainy days not quite so bad. It’s light with­out being friv­o­lous, and seri­ous with­out suc­cumb­ing to the dis­ease of douchey pre­ten­sion that’s been sweep­ing across Brook­lyn over the last cou­ple years.

Some­where in my par­ents’ house is the record “Climb­ing” by the band Moun­tain, per­haps best known for the rock radio super­jam “Mis­sis­sippi Queen.” On the back is writ­ten, “THIS RECORD WAS MADE TO BE PLAYED LOUD.” Of course, now I under­stand that from a tech­ni­cal per­spec­tive it’s refer­ring to how the record was mas­tered and cut, but back then I took it at face value. If it was meant to be played loud then what choice did I have? So I cranked the sucker until the walls shook. Well, if it’s ever been true, THIS 7-INCH WAS MADE TO BE PLAYED LOUD. There, I said it. Turn up those speak­ers and let Mini­Boone invade your brain. You might even do some­thing crazy, like dance.

Ben Heller

[[[Down­load the 7-inch]]]