Album Review: Minuit - Last Night You Saw This Band

Minuit's previous album, 2009's findmebeforeidiealonelydeath.com, was an intriguing experiment for the New Zealand trio. In comparison to their sleeker and more electronic earlier releases, their third album introduced a rawer, rockier aesthetic. Live instrumentation moved in alongside sequencers and the overall production was closer to that of a garage indie-rock band than a club-friendly dance outfit.

New album, Last Night You Saw This Band – released on the day of the alleged Mayan apocalypse – sees them folding that sense of liveliness and spontaneity into their more established sound to stunning effect. The production is the best of the band's career - bright, open, polished and warm. The songs are kept simple and memorable. With a strong foundation of inviting production and well-crafted the songs, the band permit themselves to explore their sound in all its incarnations.

The Love That Won't Shut Up is an angular, post-punk number. Book Of The Dead euphorically snatches together percussive tribal rhythms, crushing sub-bass and declamatory vocal refrains. Ghost is a strange, hovering dubstep ballad while Heaven lurches hazily alongside a Timbaland hip hop rhythm. Closer, Sit Down Beside Me is a Beatles-esque piano lullaby.

Remarkably, it all hangs together. Frontwoman Ruth Carr's idiosyncratic melodies and lyrical sensibilities ensure there's a distinct flavour to the entire record. Regardless of style or tone, Carr manages to inject a strange, lyrical phrase or hook that irretrievably twists the heart around each song. “How shall we settle this?” she crows on Warheads. “Let's settle this with bombs. I think of you, my darling, when the warheads start to fall.”