The Minders

The Minders originated as an offshoot of the Elephant 6 psychedelic pop collective yet developed from an initial recording effort into a vigorous touring ensemble. Across a catalog stretching over several decades their music moved through garage textures, Baroque pop arrangements, and paisley-tinged psychedelia with each successive release. Studio work tapered off during the mid-2000s, yet after a ten-year pause the group resurfaced with the 2016 album Into the River, which refreshed their customary lo-fi treatment of buoyant pop while retaining every experimental impulse.

Martyn Leaper, a British expatriate, and Apples in Stereo leader Robert Schneider established the band in Denver, Colorado, in 1995. What began as a lo-fi project yielded a jangly 7-inch on the Elephant 6 imprint before the lineup shifted toward live performances in 1996. Schneider assumed production duties as singer, songwriter, and guitarist Leaper enlisted drummer Rebecca Cole, bassist Joel Richardson, and lead guitarist Jeff Almond. Portions of the 1996 single Paper Plane were tracked by this provisional configuration; Richardson soon departed and Marc Willhite took the bass chair, locking in the personnel for the group’s opening chapter. Several singles and frequent concerts preceded the debut full-length, 1998’s Hooray for Tuesday. After Cole and Leaper relocated from Denver to Portland they assembled a fresh roster and issued the singles anthology Cul-De-Sacs & Dead Ends in 1999 to sustain interest during the transition. Scattered EPs and 7-inches continued to appear while the next proper albums, 2001’s Golden Street and 2006’s It’s a Bright Guilty World, arrived at wider intervals. Lineups rotated repeatedly through the 2000s until Cole exited in 2008. New material then grew scarce, limited to the digital compilation Cul-De-Sacs & Dead Ends 2 in 2012 and the 2016 arrival of Into the River, the first original songs in a decade. Momentum returned that same year with the cassette EP Boiling the Ocean and a limited lathe-cut 7-inch. In 2018 the band marked the twentieth anniversary of Hooray for Tuesday by releasing a deluxe reissue that added previously unheard bonus tracks.