My Mind
Path Masher 7″
Badmaster Records
Once upon a time in the land of Philadelphia, there was a band called Eat Forever. Eat Forever played a frenzy of loud, melodic, ADD-fueled pop songs with abrupt endings and surrealistic lyrical undertones.
Back in 2005 or 2006, they played a show in my old house’s tiny basement and afterwards, smitten by their deafening awesomeness, I asked Mr. Tim Westberg from the group if he could give our webzine a promotional copy of one of their releases to review. When I was going to shows back then, this was a frequent question I’d ask musicians. The sane answers that I’d get in reply would usually range somewhere between “Yeah, sure” and “No asshole, you need to fucking pay for that!!!” (Fair enough.) Tim’s response was much more illusive. He made it clear he was excited to have us write up a review of Eat Forever’s music, but at the time Eat Forever didn’t actually have any official releases for us to write about. His solution to this apparent quandary was to make me a fucking crazy, rough-as-shit burned cd of songs they were thinking about using for an ep (as a bonus, he also tossed in a handful of his solo experiments on 3″ cds with full artwork).
I was hardly a stranger to thrown together DIY recordings, but this Eat Forever pseudo-promo was a real kick in the butt. The whole thing was comprised of thirty-six rough mixes of only about seven or eight distinct songs played in a different random order over and over again. Some of them were decently recorded, some were totally fuzzed out or taken straight from from practice recordings. I didn’t even have a track list to help me sort out song titles or anything.
For almost any other band, I feel like this kind of confusing, completely unedited vomiting of raw material would be nearly impossible to sit through, let alone review. For Eat Forever, it strangely worked. The shit was just so catchy, so quick, so energetic, so careening from one idea to the next that it didn’t phase me to listen to a distorted third or forth out-take of the same song I’d heard just a few minutes ago. And since Eat Forever songs were inevitably written to leave you wanting more, the extreme repetition proved to be a really satisfying way to listen to the material. All in all, it was a fine introduction to a fine Philly band.
Flash forward to 2010, and much of what was Eat Forever has morphed into My Mind. Now, instead of finding myself trying to intelligently review a sprawling heap of unfinished proto-songs, I’m faced with Path Masher—a totally together, totally tight, ten minute monster of a 7″ that plays like a fucking LP.
It’s pretty clear on Path Masher that Tim and the rest of the EF holdovers in My Mind haven’t given up their old ways. Just like on the Eat Forever recordings, almost all of the eleven songs on this 7″ are well under the one minute mark. Just like before, all the songs start and stop on a dime, pull you in with sweet melodies, rile you up, and cut out just when you feel like the chorus should cut in. The opening song “Be A Fascist To A Fascist” is even straight up Eat Forever-era material—an updated version of a song that had made it onto the original burned promo they gave me years and years ago.
But as conceptually true as My Mind is to much of the old Eat Forever schtick, Path Masher definitely isn’t a simple regurgitation of old formulas. The most impressive part of this 7″ for me isn’t how much it sounds an old band I used to like, it’s how much they are able to break new ground and take the music to the next level. While Eat Forever was more bound up in the spastic gesticulations of their psyche-pop punk oeuvre, My Mind’s pop stylings are somewhat cleaner and more expansive—on Path Masher they seem more willing to slow things down, making it easier to pick out discernible notes of The Zombies or inflections of old Elephant 6 bands in their brief compositions. Despite their self-imposed limitations around length and pacing, My Mind seems to constantly push the envelope to find new ways to bust out razor sharp song-writing that makes its point in less than sixty seconds flat.
Jam-packed with compellingly innovative tunes, Path Masher is about as full a meal as you’re going to get on a 7″ record. It’s a special thing to come across music that is as provocative as it is catchy, and so I absolutely recommend this release as an entry point into the work of a band making important music here in Philly.
While I believe this 7″ may presently be out of print, you can still check it out via this My Mind-related blogspot. (This site also features most of the Eat Forever discography, some of Tim’s solo projects, and a bunch of other really solid music for your downloading pleasure.)