Minto Lay It On Us

The year 1992 was the year punk broke and while things have changed drastically in the music industry over the last 18 years, someone apparently forgot to tell Minto. This band of Canadians are still living in a time when Mudhoney, Mother Love Bone, and Nirvana were bigger than sliced bread. It was a time when there actually wasa music industry! Recruiting Steve Albini via time machine, the group enlisted him to help them record their latest record, Lay It On Me.

Drenched in maple syrup and flannel, Lay It On Meis like the best record Neil Young never recorded with the grungeratti of Seattle. Churning, grey, and heavy as all heck, Minto create a strange brew of metallic blues sludge that sounds like it was scraped off of the bottom of Puget Sound and exported to Canada. Lay It On Me is surprisingly good stuff for sounding as retro as it does. I must admit, having been around during that whole time and remembering when Green River first came out and Bleachwas so hard to find on CD because no one outside of Seattle had heard of Sub Pop, this is like a joyous blast from the past that never gets boring.

Sturdy guitar work and gravelly vocals make the record as good as it is. Songs like, "Bird's Eye View," have more fantastic guitar solos on it then I could keep track of, and a chorus that no matter how gritty are still ridiculously catchy. These guys are really quite good at what they do and it makes Lay It On Mestand on the shoulders of everyone else. Abrasive and rough around the edges, Minto prove you don't need a lot of glossy production to make a great record. Lay It On Meis the sound of raw untamed music that's in love with a bygone era and what it's those characteristics that make it an exceptional record. If you ever owned a pair of Doc Martens or thought that Neil Young's Rust Never Sleeps was a seminal recording then you need to find yourself a copy of Minto's Lay It On Me, you won't be disappointed.