Brooklyn-based quintet Snowmine consists of bassist Jay Goodman, drummer Alex Beckmann, lead singer/composer Grayson Sanders and guitarists Austin Mendenhall and Calvin Pia. Snowmine has earned indie acclaim for paying homage to the 1980s brand of intelligent, well-crafted pop music, and for successfully pursuing an innovative crowdfunding strategy for their second album. Dave CromwellThe Deli Magazine's sums up their appeal: "an indie pop sound rich with echo pedals, tribal beats, electro-acoustic soundscapes and classical orchestrations".
If you're wondering about the intriguing album cover and album title for their debut album Laminate Pet Animal (2012), Sanders has explained that the album's central inspiration is the morbid desire to attempt to immortalize an emotional relationship (and pointed out that album title is a palindrome):
"If the "pet animal" is your affectionate, comforting friend or situation, then perhaps the desirable (and macabre) thing to do would be to preserve it forever? To willfully ignore or deny a murkier reality ahead or behind you? The idea with the artwork (done by our awesome partner Jesse Corinella), was to create a beautiful creature both alive and dead. Preserved forever – laminated."
(The Deli Magazine, 2012)
This desire for a 'lasting' emotional relationship is echoed in "Let Me In", the fourth track from the album. The song is relatively simple on a lyrical level, embodying the desire for intimacy, emotional connection and romantic recognition from a significant other, as well as the fear of loneliness:
'Just to want itAnd not to need itMakes me let it goBut then you let me inAnd I don't want itBut you made me believe itSo do I really? Do I really?
If you could you keep it togetherFor a moment in timeThen you'd see that I can't beYour excuse for a loverA steep mountain to climbYou would see'
(Source of lyrics: )
The song works wonders by virtue of Sanders' evocative and distinctive voice (I fell chills when he voices the desolation and desperation in the third verse: 'And I think I see this happening again/ From my lonely point of view'), its juxtaposition of quiet, intimate lulls and an energy-packed, sonically dense chorus. When listing Laminate Pet Animal as an album of the week, Bandcamp noted the distinctive 'dreamlike' formula that operates on the track:
"Wonderful, slightly off-kilter verses lead into soaring, dreamy choruses featuring layer upon layer of jangly guitar, with arrangements reaching symphonic proportions and draped with soft, clean falsetto voices that you always suspect of wry and knowing cynicism under all that sugar coating."
