Rough Trade Album Of The Month June 2016 – Minor Victories “Minor Victories”

This one is easy.

After seeing their storming London debut at the start of May, I had looked forward to getting the self titled LP by Minor Victories. You can read a little more about how the band came together here but in short, it is an amalgam of members of Mogwai, Slowdive and Editors. It is a record that I would have bought anyway so it was a bonus to receive it via the Rough Trade Album Of The Month service.

The LP doesn’t disappoint. It is quite simply a very high quality album. The songs are direct. They manage to pull off the wall of sound thing on “Scattered Ashes” but overlay boy/girl harmonies. It is pretty fully realised which is the beauty of being recorded and written by musicians who know their way around songs and studios. It has dynamic differences both within and between the songs. It is just bloody good.

The band have a number of festival dates lined up for the rest of the year. Hopefully they will play a few more standalone concerts, if their day jobs in their current bands allows.

Here’s a couple of films to tempt you in.

The first is for “Breaking My Light”, the cinematic set piece of side one of the LP.

The second is a five minute film with string driven versions of Minor Victories material, which is featured on the Rough Trade bonus disc. The skateboarding theme is true to Stuart Braithwaite spirit. I saw him play with Mogwai a few years ago at the Royal Festival Hall. It was around the time that the skatepark in the undercroft of the terrace on the South Bank was about to get built over for more shops and restaurants. Braithwaite was wearing a t-shirt supporting the boarders and thankfully the threat to their pitch disappeared. This was after a prolonged campaign reached agreement with Lambeth Council to preserve their space.

Mogwai’s music has been used to soundtrack many skateboard videos and they’ve even offered up their own skateboard design for sale.

I feel like I’m in danger of damning the band with faint praise but if you are looking for high quality “indie” (god I hate that term), then give it a go. Minor Victories won’t disappoint you.