Review Summary: back alleys of the other side
Midnight Mines seem to have stumbled their way to an identity, not that that was ever the goal. Their haphazard assemblage of crusty, dub-inspired noise bursts and sloppy, but still charmingly rhythmic garage anthems subscribe to just enough tradition to sneer at it. It appears they've deemed this latest release,
If You Can't Find A Partner Use A Wooden Chair, as perhaps their most legitimate work at this point, as it's the first one out of four to bear the band's name on the cover, and also the first with something other than an eerie, out-of-context black-and-white still for the artwork. And while the music does satisfy a particular textural craving, the band has still, for the most part, kept it ambiguous as to what exactly is behind all this sneer and slime, and to exactly how serious anyone should be taking it.
It's not just a lived-in sloppiness; there is a definite eccentricity here, but beneath the boggy fuzz and the muddled, off-key shouting, one starts to wonder if this sound is really enough to sell the whole package, a package that at times really does sound like it fell out of a trash can. The minute-long opener, "Friend Called Five," is a sudden dive into a room of sharp, barely-orchestrated feedback mixed with faint, ghostly vocals, and ironically, the band defines their eccentricity more clearly with this song than they do with the ten-and-a-half-minute live jam "Accattone." Another paradox, this song teems with all kinds of muddled fury, and yet sounds strangely vacuous, like the song's original backbone was sucked out and now what we're left with is this harsh, obnoxiously mixed regurgitation. And despite its ceaseless, impossibly rigid electronic-based riddim, the song rather lazily winds into pointlessness about two minutes before it ends.
In a way, the idea of this release being a whole cohesive 'album' thing was kind of left at the door. Some may need a grain of salt for that, but either way, some genuine charm does make its way into these songs, usually in the form of a nostalgic post-punk sensibility, like the band's attempt to recall all the favorite bands you forgot about. Here we have our poster-child "Artificial Light," with guitars that both crash and gleam, and an actual
hook, I'll be damned. I can't understand a damn word, but it's got one of those timeless rhythms that seem to have a direct line to your stomach. The closer, "Waiting in the Mist," also has a certain charm, with its wistful, distinguishable chords and a brightening absence of drums. But true to this group's fashion, it's curious. Curious that a band would spend so much time reveling in filth, just to end with an excursion into truly sincere territory, though insincerity might be the only sincere thing about it. And in the way of competent songs, we also have "After Dark," which while actually being a rather ugly track, is likely the album's most memorable, as it's really the only one that refrains from muddling the riffs with esoteric bullshit and thus, the message actually comes through:
"I was walkin', in the park/I was walkin', after dark/I was walkin', in the park/Just to fiiiiiiiiiind you."
There's a lot of different ways a sound like this could go. I'm sure if I, artistically, found myself balancing keenly on the outskirts, I'd try to have as much fun as I could there, too. But there's evidence of a creativity here that could lead to something great, as opposed to the bracingly noisy pulp-punk this album ends up amounting to. Perhaps even writing this much about it was a fool's errand. Whatever it is, it's an artifact; a garbage sculpture that dares to look at our modern plasticity not with indignation, but with a pure indifference, which is obviously even cooler.
