Some bands give you a certain style, and keep on giving you that same sound for years to come. This strategy is fine, if it works and we listeners don’t get so bored with the shtick that our ears bleed.
Some bands grow before your ears, from infancy to each step there on. This can work as long as you don’t evolve into a failed experiment. Minmae, however, has been advancing in sound, and kicking ass with each passing step.
With nine records scattered across the past decade, and plans to record a new album under their most recent line up before the year is out, Minmae is not a band to slow down.
“It was more of a natural progression, it was never like, ‘now I’m going to play steady, full-time, with all these people,’ it just sort of happened,” says Sean Brooks founder of the band. “My tastes have changed. When I started out I was into more experimental noise, and now I am in to more pop.”
Portland’s Minmae has come a long way since Brooks started recording his own brand of music in San Diego back in 1998. For five years Minmae remained within the musical talents and interests of Brooks. It was very experimental, before he started to branch out, bringing more people into his experiments.
As Brooks transitioned Minmae into the Portland scene sometime around 2001, it became more of a regular band, Brooks says. Which is where it needed to go, as the music grew and changed, and the need to tour became more insistent.
Though Minmae has had a break-up of sorts, with its first Portland formation hitting the dust, but Brooks wasn’t about to stop there. He had already brought Minmae too far to turn back, so with a new set of members, and a new direction, Minmae was once again reborn, set to evolve and hit new territory.
With the newest lineup consisting of Ian Watts on guitar, Josh Heinze on bass and Chris Lay on drums, Brooks decided to change things up a bit, getting more input from all members. There is a certain loss of experimentation, according to Brooks, but the payoff is turning out to be something new and great for him to value just as much.
“It definitely got more refined,” says Brooks. “It definitely got more polished. Kind of jangly, it’s become a little bit like power pop, y’ know, like a lot of ’60s and ’70s bands but also a certain element like Sonic Youth.”
By the end of this year, Minmae plans on recording a new record to display their fresh membership, with a release date expected sometime next year.
“I wanted to encompass all the music I listen to,” Brooks says of his upcoming release. “It’s going to be stylistically all over the map.”
Brooks is hoping for a March release in time for a short tour the band has in the works.
“We’re definitely going to hit the road in March,” says Brooks. “I don’t know how extensive it will be, it’s not going to be as big, we’re going to try not to kill ourselves.”
If you can’t wait until March, Minmae will be hitting stages throughout Portland until that time, proving to local fans that they have the talent and ambition to keep their sound an exciting fixture of the local scene for years to come.
Minmae w/ Jesus Eagle, Chores and Throwback SuburbiaKelly’s OlympianOct. 31, 9 p.m. 21-plus