Joey Ryan & The Inks

Now five years and two albums into their ascent on the local scene, indie-pop quintet Joey Ryan & the Inks (whose frontman is employed here at City Pages) continue to evolve and expand their sound impressively. While they may have started life as sunny '60s-pop revivalists with shiny hooks and a streamlined sound, their latest effort, the six-track [pause ep.], manages to feel weightier than its full-length predecessors despite its shorter running time. While things start off in familiar Inks territory with the soaring single "Of a Feather," subsequent tracks find the band successfully experimenting with moody mid-tempo rock ("The Transfiguration of Eugene Wolf") and woozy-synth-driven balladry ("A Lonely Spark"). The end result feels simultaneously retro and futuristic and a worthy listening-shelf companion to Wilco's Jay Bennett-era efforts. - City Pages

Minnesota may not feel much like Southern California during those cold winter months, but this quintet sounds sunny enough to melt the St. Paul snow. Plus it’s hard not to love a band with a stop-motion Lego video. - Paste Magazine

"Extremely catchy and well-crafted, Ryan's band does pop-rock as well as anybody playing today."
- When you Motor Away

‘Dennis Lane’ #1 MN release of 2011: “These sunny, power-pop masters follow up their delightful 2009 debut with an even stronger collection of songs that recall the melodic spirit of the Beach Boys, the Byrds, and the Beatles. There’s such a casual ease in what these guys do, they make elegance feel nearly effortless.” – St. Paul Pioneer Pres - St. Paul Pioneer Press

“The album has a crisp and light feel as if its been hanging out to dry on a clothesline all day in the grassy fields of the Midwest. Yep. In six minutes, a talented band can take us places some bands aspire (and never get) to. Do yourself a favor and find out about Minneapolis’s best-kept secret before it spreads beyond the Midwest!” - Little Rat Bastard

This St. Paul band's debut features enough jangly twang on "Ohio, Circa 1984" to suggest they're alternative country.
But delicate guitar pop is the centerpiece of this album. It's lo-fi and impressionistic in a way that's become common to indie rock. Joey Ryan & the Inks sound as if the Old 97's and the Shins wrote songs together.
References to the Beach Boys are also in order, and not just because of the band's expansive use of the kind of swooning vocal harmonies you'll hear on "Oh, Caroline." Their brooding nostalgia, like Brian Wilson's, belies their youthful age. On "Anything We Want," the horns rise and fall like heavy sighs.
The album sounds like Surfer Girl having ventured to a place where the buffalo roam. Well, Here We Are Then is a lonely sonic landscape, and it's worthy of your lust. - The Isthmus

Here's one last album for the 2009 Best Of lists. Well, Here We Are Then is a vitamin D jolt, a perfectly timed release to aid winter-chilled Midwesterners yearning for an injection of anything warm and sunny. The local five-piece transports listeners to mid-'60s California, where masses of beach bums were able to sing four-part harmonies while simultaneously surfing monster waves and daydreaming about Liverpool and Cuban heel boots. Though listeners would be hard pressed to find a track undeserving of radio play and audience applause, - City Pages - Erin Roof

GREAT NEW POP BAND. Listeners into bands like Teenage Fanclub, Game Theory, Big Star, and Sufjan Stevens will immediately be drawn into this band's music. Joey Ryan & The Inks record intelligent pure pop with an emphasis on interesting vocal melodies. The songs on Well, Here We Are Then are clean and smart...and ultimately very very catchy. Not only are the songs great...but the vocals are absolutely mind-blowing. So many modern pop bands are carbon copies of one another. That is definitely not the case here. These folks are inventive...and they're making classic pop music that will sound incredible for decades to come. Twelve groovy cuts here including "Don't Look Back On Your Own," "Oh, Caroline," "You Are All Friends of Mine," and "The Part Taken." TOP PICK. - babysue.com

A lot of bands are takers. They beat you over the head with artiness, nuance and general riffraff, and only then does the listener get something back. Joey Ryan & the Inks are givers. The band's lust for '60s pop, abundance of melodies and penchant for hooks reward without asking for anything more than a pair of ears and a pulse. At the end of an eight-hour workday,

The Inks' coupling of musical proficiency and stellar influences -- combined with Ryan's knack for vocal hooks and solid lyricism -- creates not just ear candy, but ear candy with some cachet. - Vita.mn - Jay Boller

#10 (tie) on Best of 2009 Albums

Attention Sufjan Stevens and Shins fans: Minneapolis now has its own boyishly voiced, playfully arranged, sunny-side-up ethereal folk-pop band. This quintet's full-length debut enlists horns, banjo, bells and lots of piano to great effect. Ryan, 25, also harks back to Brian Wilson in the openly titled "Oh, Caroline" and Alex Chilton in "Shame on Me Once (Shame on You Twice)," and his youth helps keep it all sweet and absolutely sincere.
- Minneapolis Star Tribune - Chris Riemenschneider

“Well, Here We Are Then,” the debut album from fresh-faced quintet Joey Ryan and the Inks, is a slice of breezy West Coast pop dang near on par with the greats of the genre. Like Brian Wilson before him, Ryan understands the power of pairing melancholic ache with exceedingly sunny melodies, while his bandmates toss off tasty power-pop riffs with a razor-sharp accuracy rarely heard outside of early Cars records - Metromix

NO. 2: JOEY RYAN AND THE INKS, "WELL, HERE WE ARE THEN" (SELF-RELEASED)
Newcomers Joey Ryan and the Inks are modern classicists in the best possible sense and created a record filled with sunny harmonies and songs that feel good (even when the lyrics are sad). One can hear both the Jayhawks and the Byrds in the band's sound, but these guys have figured out how to transcend any obvious influences.
Key tracks: "Shame on Me Once (Shame on You Twice)," "Anything We Want"
- St. Paul Pioneer Press - Ross Raihala