Snowmine
Laminate Pet Animal

Here we find ourselves in a forest, and the cover image helps us to empathize with one of its small and stealthy inhabitants, whom I imagine walking on the snowy ground while leaving behind its footprints.

This is the first image that comes to mind when listening to “Laminate Pet Animal,” and not only because within it we can find a track titled “Danger In The Snow!”, the most characteristic of the work, where both the lyrics and music, with an almost dissonant use of brass, warn us of some unknown danger. But this is just one piece at the extreme of the album’s sounds, which are more characterized by cheerful arrangements, a slightly reverberated voice, as if it were an echo moderately distant from the point of the forest where we are, and guitars that play all on the higher strings, between arpeggios and triads. One of the most beautiful examples of this is “Let Me In.” But since I’m at it, I can also say that much is done by the rhythm section that always keeps the dynamics and attention high.

A second thought that comes to my mind, especially hearing the first tracks, is that the songs can be defined almost as stadium-like, if instead of the stadium we put the Quidditch field of Hogwarts castle.

Snowmine, a fairly unknown band, which I would never have guessed came from a city like New York, are skilled at handling a certain type of American indie-rock, comparable to that of Shearwater, although in this album with less experimentation and more canonical structure.

A little gem, or rather, an acorn!