The Mint Chicks - Crazy?Yes! Dumb? No!

Tue 26th Sep, 2006 in Music Reviews

It’s been a long time since something from New Zealand has made me sit up and listen. There’s something about The Mint Chicks, however, that makes me want to cut loose. Could it be that they’ve chosen to fuse together a lot of different styles to create their own sound? They take the raw punk rock guitar, mix it with hard rock drumming and layer the sweet pop vocal stylings of Kody Nielson. Together, their sound sits somewhere on the border of orgasmic and punchy.

Crazy? Yes! Dumb? No!  is the Auckland quartet’s fourth album for Flying Nun Records. Once again, band members Ruban and Kody are back in the production seat. This method has worked for them in the past, so why bother changing. It helps them keep their creative nuance on a high.

The first thing to catch my attention on the album is the persistence of the churning guitars in Ockham’s Razor. I could find myself and so many others dancing to this song quite easily. It reminds me of something that either The Dickies or The Misfits could’ve done.

Welcome To Nowhere opens with a girl screaming “Get out of my house!” and doors are slammed or something is thrown, I can’t quite make out which. Kody soon starts his singing duties for the third song on the album. The loud, quiet, loud style works perfectly. You could almost imagine the song playing in a room as a door swings open and shut to drown the sound out.

The most delightful and poppy song on the album is You’re Just As Confused As I Am, clocking in at number four. It explores the mystery of lust with the chorus chiming in with “Kiss me without hesitation”. You could be easily led and hooked with just those words, but the song on a whole makes it one of the highlights.

Another highlight on the album is the next song, Walking Off A Cliff Again. It sounds a lot like the Supergrass of the 1990s that so many of us fell in love with. You could dance your socks off to this track and sing your heart out at the same time.

Songs like the ones I’ve already mentioned are the reasons why Crazy? Yes! Dumb? No! is such a treat of an album. I can see it being high on every indie’s Favourite Album of the Year lists.