One the home of a prosperous fishing industry, West Marsh, Grimsby, Northeast Lincolnshire, UK has become a terribly bleak place. Its northern and eastern boundaries are formed by Alexandra Dock. Its western border is the smoggy Pyewipe Industrial Area. And its southern border, a major railroad line and Cromwell Road. Tourists have no particular reason to visit. The job outlook is poor and the area’s young people are desperate to escape. From what’s been conveyed to me, it’s the sort of hopeless place that should feel familiar to countless Americans — particularly, if you’ve been in the Rust Belt.
The emerging British post-punk quartet Mint — Zak Rashid. Veggie, Lenny and Bambi — hail from West Marsh, and they can trace their origins to when they all “attended” the same school and bonded while locking horns over their differing musical tastes: Lenny loved Nick Cave, The Birthday Party and The Pop Group and the remaining three band members loved indie classics and harder rock genres and styles
The quartet went on to study at Grimsby Institute and while in school, they started Mint — but started taking it seriously in 2018. Of course, like a lot of contemporary indie bands, the members of Mint all have day jobs: Zak Rashid is a pro skateboarder and surfer by day and he taught himself graphic design on his free time. And when he’s not playing gigs, he runs the only surf shop in town while designing artwork for artists like Lucy Spraggan, Black Honey and False Heads. Lenny works at the cafe net door while Bambi and Veggie work shifts at the local soup canning factories. In a short period of time, they’ve already received airplay from BBC Radio 1 and play listing on Radio X; they’ve also made appearances playing at the major British music festivals. But last year they began to fully develop and realize their own sound: an idiosyncratic fusion of indie melodies to muscular instrumentation.
The rising band’s latest single “Turbulence” is a seething and breakneck post-punk anthem centered around insistent and propulsive drumming, angular blasts of guitar and shouted lyrics expressing unease and anxiety with an increasing menace and uncertainty that evokes the vacillating thoughts and emotions of one seemingly in the middle of a mental breakdown. “It’s a nod to mental health seen through a cinematic plane crash” the band’s Rashid says in press notes.
The recently released video ostensibly captures the fulfillment of the ultimate male fantasy — the horny teenager/young man being seduced by the sexually available and desirable teacher. Shot while adhering to social distancing guidelines, the student’s fantasy is reduced to being more along the lines of live sex shows and sexting — but it ends with a bitter and emasculating irony.
