- Welcome to Daytrotter
- Fingerprints
- Come On
- Placebo War
- Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots, Pt. 1
Ideally, somewhere in the human cellar, where the control room is, where all of the most important operations are triggered, the mother room and the war den, there would be a pre-existing algorithm or precondition that would cue some song from San Francisco’s Minipop to play at pivotal moments we were getting ready to break into. Those waters would be the icy ones, the harsh and scary murks that alter certain aspects of life forever or for a good long while. There would be an internal signal to the body and from the body that could be acted upon to dutifully send the arm of the rib cage’s jukebox over to mechanically pull up selection No. whatever it would be listed as and bring it to the needle, which would handily be a rib or the sternum, sharpened a little more than our current ones are. This idea would require some remodeling of the basic structure of the human body, but it would be nothing a little brainstorming and some generous angel capital or fund-raising couldn’t come up with. But it would be great. This new way that a body would react to those tender moments that flare up, often unexpectedly, leaving us thinking, “Well, that’s not how I thought it would happen,” or “That’s not how I would have planned it,” all regarding sparkling moments that can’t be and have refused to be planned for as long as anyone can remember. Though “Come On” is described by the band as a song drummer Lauren Grubb wrote about a friend losing a friend to drugs, there is so much heartbreaking love in the swelling and un-fussy feel of it that it would solidify significant encounters with people who would go on to play important roles in our lives. Depending on whether or not a kiss means anything to you anymore or if that’s just a means to a sloppier end, Tricia Kanne’s vocals feel as if they are full of mint and active ingredients that you wouldn’t be ready for until they make contact with your own bare skin and then the tingling starts to work their way in like vines. As another’s new lips – perhaps the last set of new lips that will ever do so – comes closer to that first contact with your own, THAT’s when the nerves and the hair and the cheeks feel a blast of heat from the boiler room and THAT’s when Kanne’s voice is there as a welcome wagon, kindly receiving the moment. Minipop doesn’t stick exclusively to this touchstone-of-experience platter, but when it’s loveliest, there is a definite quality of “something just happened, something I wasn’t prepared for so allow me just a second to come to or catch my breath,” leaving a person exhausted or sapped of strength. It’s as if the gentlest of nights and the gentlest of people have just decided to converge on your bedroom and listen to you think, listen to you feel and be peacefully invested in only one thing. What that one thing is, maybe the song – the one or the two standbys that we have fused to be involuntarily played – are supposed to tell us what that one thing is. Minipop is a good enabler.