Marvel Kind – Mini – Review

Marvel Kind

Mini (Throwrug)
by Nik Rainey

By nature, I am an inquisitive man. Which used to mean that I would pester my elders with deep, knotty queries as to the existence of a supreme being, delve into the choppy headwaters of Hegelian ethical conundrums, and tirelessly work long hours into the night carefully dissecting the finer points of modern sociopolitical debate. Alas, my analytical mind is scarcely what it once was given the exigencies of age and inhalant abuse, therefore most of my more salient inquests these days tend to run along the lines of, “What the hell was that?”

The new EP from Marvel Kind, an amalgam as curious as any I’ve chanced upon in recent months, again and again shoves such questions to the fore: Where did that Uncle Meat orchestral section come from? What is it doing in an otherwise simple garage-pop tune? If these lads and/or lasses insist on playing garage-pop, do they not think it wise to open the door first and stay clear of the gas cans and turpentine bottles? That whingeing keyboard – is that a rude tribute to the musical attentuations of the 1980s or did the engineer neglect to erase the test tones from the tape before the band entered the studio? Is this pretentiously unpretentious or unpretentiously pretentious? Was it in their contracts that the word “motherfucker” had to be included somewhere? What about “lederhosen?” Is this ironically ramshackle in a Pavement or in a Presidents of the United States of America way? Do the band members have more John Cage or Ween records in their personal collections? That bratty, insincere vocal style – is it a genetic trait exclusive to well-bred underachievers between the ages of 19 and 26? And, most importantly, why do I feel compelled to continue hitting the “repeat” button for further investigation the way I kept re-reading a single paragraph in Ecce Homo in search of every elusive nuance? The only answer I’ve been able to suss out thus far is “twelve.” Which is why I listen to CDs instead of reading Nietszche anymore.
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