This came out in 2002 – or at least that’s when I got it. Here’s what I said about it back then (with some minor editing):
Now here’s something you don’t hear very often these days: A New York band that isn’t trying to rip off The Strokes.
In fact, if you could accuse co-ed Brooklyn outfit The Mink Lungs of trying to sound like anybody, it would be a band that doesn’t even exist — Guided By Voices fronted by Beck, perhaps. The Better Button, the group’s determinedly quirky debut disc, features all the lo-fi fuzz-rock grit, folky psychedelia and sweet garage-pop melodicism of the former, along with the noisy four-track experimentalism and eclecticism of the latter. Driven by lackadaisically loose performances, silly tape-speed manipulations and randomly selected synthesizer bleeps, enchantingly idiosyncratic tracks like Your Nose Lights Up The Dark, Blue and Creme Car and Skin Or No Skin have the boundless originality and playfulness possessed only by those who don’t really know what the hell they’re doing. Here’s hoping they never figure it out.
