Oh Minnows - Might [Vinyl EP]

Young & Lost Club

Now I know that vinyl is pretty much irrelevant to today’s music-guzzlers, and isn’t as high-fidelity as trusty WAV or even MP3 files, blah blah, blah – but yes, I’m one of those people (considerably under the age of 45) who thinks there’s a bit of romance in getting a vinyl record. For a start, it’s bigger than a CD, and bigger is obviously always better. That means it’s got lots to look at; the cover is a nice big shiny picture you could put on your wall, and if you’re lucky there’s an inner sleeve with even more goodies to be gawped at. Then there’s the fact that you can watch the music being played, with a needle! Awesome.

So, when reviewing a vinyl, it seems only right to review the physical bits as well as the music contained within. In this case, the sleeve is quite nice, adequately shiny and won’t let any pretty vinyl collection down, but what’s this? Three tracks? That’s not really very many for an EP now, is it? Granted they’re all individual tracks, no remixes and what not, but I can imagine a buyer feeling a little short-changed for their £3.40 (£4.80 with postage) at being told they were purchasing an EP that’s essentially a single. There’s a credit crunch on you know! But seriously now, the only gripe with the physical record itself is that the two sides are set to be played at different speeds, something not mentioned anywhere on the sleeve, resulting in an amusing John Peel-like state of affairs in which you try and work out if the track is extremely avant-garde or just being played at the wrong speed.

The title track itself is a bit dull, there’s the token 80's sound mainly in the form of enjoyable wobbly synths that sound like they’ve been sampled from an over-used Bladerunnervideo tape. There’s also some nice staccato but echoey guitar effects with that ridiculously happy warm feeling that the Due South theme tune gave teenage girls in the 90's. All in all, 'Might' is a quite-nice-but-not-fantastic slow atmospheric pop track.

The whole of "Might" EP carries on in the same vein, all relatively nice and harmless, all not bad. The tracks have the same dreamy multi-layered vocals throughout, which is very now. Oh Minnows are bang on time with this release, and they should tick all the boxes that usually get me raving about a band – it’s in the same style as current atmosphere-heavy bands like The Big Pink (in places), The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, and, with third track 'High Or Low,' Exlovers. And as glad as I am that all this is happening, there’s something preventing Oh Minnows from being on a par with the rest; "Might" EP is missing some attitude or punch. Maybe they should just turn everything up a bit, there’s nothing like a good dose of distortion to up your cool factor. If you like the bands I’ve just mentioned, then Oh Minnows are more than worth a listen, but for me they’re not quite there yet.