Mit Hamine – Pagojet (hitmachine.bandcamp.com)
This local Richmond band caught my attention, as well as that of many others, last week with their somewhat ill-fated appearance on Tom Scharpling’s Best Show on WFMU. So with that in mind, I decided to check out their latest album, which is available on bandcamp as a free download or a low-priced vinyl LP. Upon playing it, I was immediately struck by Mit Hamine’s resemblance to the sort of lo-fi bedroom recordings that were coming out a lot in the early 90s, mostly on cassettes. The most famous graduate of that entire scene is undoubtedly the Mountain Goats, but Mit Hamine are a lot closer in sound to a band like Wingtip Sloat–which is funny in light of the fact that, during their call to The Best Show, Tom Scharpling listened to a 30-second description of their sound and said, “It sounds like you guys made a Wingtip Sloat record.” Turns out he was right.
Mit Hamine – Pagojet (hitmachine.bandcamp.com)
This local Richmond band caught my attention, as well as that of many others, last week with their somewhat ill-fated appearance on Tom Scharpling’s Best Show on WFMU. So with that in mind, I decided to check out their latest album, which is available on bandcamp as a free download or a low-priced vinyl LP. Upon playing it, I was immediately struck by Mit Hamine’s resemblance to the sort of lo-fi bedroom recordings that were coming out a lot in the early 90s, mostly on cassettes. The most famous graduate of that entire scene is undoubtedly the Mountain Goats, but Mit Hamine are a lot closer in sound to a band like Wingtip Sloat–which is funny in light of the fact that, during their call to The Best Show, Tom Scharpling listened to a 30-second description of their sound and said, “It sounds like you guys made a Wingtip Sloat record.” Turns out he was right.
But of course, references to an obscure northern Virginia band who had their heyday fifteen years ago (but are actually still around, crazily enough) won’t do much to help most of our readers understand what Mit Hamine sounds like, so allow me to elaborate. These songs are generally built around rudimentary percussion and simple melody lines played by a single instrument, often a keyboard. Then various ambient noises are mixed in, sometimes with little relationship to what else is being played on the song. There’s also usually singing somewhere relatively low in the mix, which varies on quality depending on the song. I tend to like Erica Martinez’s vocals better than those of her male compatriots, but based on the wide variety of instruments, I think it’s reasonable to assume that everyone in the band is switching instruments on almost every song, which might mean that she’s not available to sing all the time. Regardless, getting her in front of a microphone more often seems like it’d be a good move.
It’s relatively easy to parse these songs, and form an accurate description of Mit Hamine’s sound from them. What’s tougher is deciding how I feel about them as a whole. In truth, I find Mit Hamine to be a group with more potential than fully-realized awesomeness at this point. The lyrics are a particularly weak point through many of these songs–they seem to have been written solely with an eye to give the members something to sing so the songs aren’t instrumental. That’s fine when they are low enough in the mix to be unintelligible, but there were definitely times on this album when the lyrics were both completely audible and completely ridiculous. The odd instrumentation and unfinished-sounding quality of the lo-fi recordings here keep Mit Hamine walking the line between legitimate lo-fi pop band and goofy teenaged bedroom experiments anyway, so the times when the lyrics aren’t as well-developed make it hard to continue taking the music you’re hearing seriously.
On the other hand, there are some legitimately good ideas being explored here–“Precious Tits” and “Bad Passenger” both seem like they could be great pop songs if they were more fully developed. It’d be easy to say that these guys should restructure into a more standard guitar-bass-drums rock-style band lineup, too, but I won’t go that route. I recognize that what they’re doing, while it is always going to be more challenging for casual listeners, also has its own rewards. Nonetheless, I think a bit more polish, in the performances if not in the recording quality, could help. I’m not a big fan of the ambient overdubs which often distract from the focus of the songs with off-time clanking, and I could also use less of the (deliberately?) atonal vocal lines that show up on some of these songs, running counter to the main melody of the songs rather than complementing them. It’s certainly possible to make great pop music with a lo-fi sensibility–bands like the Swell Maps were proving that 30 years ago. However, it’s easier to screw around and end up with a half-assed piece of work, the weak points of which can be passed off as amateurish spontaneity, or whatever. Mit Hamine give indications of being capable of Swell Maps-ish brilliance at points on this album, but just as often, it seems like they take the easy way out. Pagojet shows potential, but they won’t ever achieve that potential unless they try harder.
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For those who are interested, Mit Hamine are in the process of making a movie entitled Fargo 2, which is apparently about their band. They are finishing up the filming this Saturday, and could use some help with that (see link for details)They’re showing the film at The Byrd Theatre a week later, on Sunday August 7 at 2 PM. I imagine the editing marathons that will ensue in the interim will be hell, but hopefully what they come up with will at least be entertaining. This will also apparently be the record release show for the vinyl version of Pagojet, and as far as I can tell, it looks like Mit Hamine will be playing a set in addition to screening their film. This event might be total chaos, but it’ll probably be entertaining, so mark your calendars.
