Minutemen – Project: Mersh 12" recordMinutemen Project: Mersh 12" record ""I got it! We'll have them write hit songs!" some nameless record company executive says in the cover painting to the Minutemen's 1985 EP Project Mersh, and that joke covers about half of the record's formula. While the Minutemen had been writing more melodic and approachable songs with each release, the massive barrage of 90 to 180 second songs on the epic Double Nickels on the Dime was at once an embarrassment of

The presence of expansive keyboards

the imaginative guitarist Ubaldo Fambuena

Andrea Lisi

Monster Magnet)

a record that makes you stomp and shiver

make a soundtrack

on the one hand the guitarist Xabier Iriondo (Afterhours

both in a ritualistic sense

how can you stay in the background as a spectator when the songs are like blow dryers in your face and the vocals are as carnivorous as a flesh-eating chieftain

bass and vocals live straight down on 2" 16 ch tape

like losing tracks in a valley of rage

They drive each song forward as the vocals ebb