Song of the Day: Minks - Everything's Fine

Every Monday through Friday, we deliver a different song as part of our Song of the Day podcast subscription. This podcast features exclusive KEXP in-studio performances, unreleased songs, and recordings from independent artists that our DJs think you should hear. Today’s featured song, selected by Midday Show host Cheryl Waters, is “Everything's Fine” by Minks from the 2013 album Tides End on Captured Tracks.

Minks - Everything's Fine (MP3)

We were introduced to Boston band Minks back in 2011 with their debut LP, By The Hedge. Back then, the band was a darker thing, with songs like "Funeral Song" and "Cemetery Rain" that smothered brightly hopeless tracks with a wall of sound and reverb. Channeling the goth gods and writing some pretty grade-A tunes, it was a great debut, albeit not the cheeriest one. But with new album,f Tides End, Minks are brightening up a bit, taking their sound not to the historically correct over the rainbow cheeriness of new wave, but a dreamy shoegaze wonderland that puts them right at home on their label Captured Tracks. Tides End is definitely the same band, but with a new sense of size and scope that does these songwriters a lot of favors. Their tunes beg for wide horizons and endless skies and with Tides End, we get to hear it that way.

"Everything's Fine" is a great exposition of Minks' excellent new, grown up sound. This time around, Minks looks back on goth music as fondly as they do Fleetwood Mac, with a warm groove and a wonderful guitar hook to back frontman Sonny Kilfoyle's watery vocals. "Everything's fine in my mind when I'm far away" he sings, as if in a memory. The track is heavily reminiscent in feeling, both musically and lyrically. The mixture plays well for Minks. Here, their unique conglomeration of sounds speaks a much truer picture of who they are as an individual presentation than work they've done before. "Everything's Fine" is an excellent track that showcases their growth and gives us an incredible song of the day offering for today.

Minks just performed last weekend for the mini festival Five Years of Captured Tracks in Brooklyn, but they currently don't have any shows listed for the near future. Be sure to check out their website and Facebook page for updates. For now, watch the official video for "Margot", another song from the new album: