Mina Tindle – Taranta

With a stage name adapted from twist-laden, Michael Caine-starring thriller Sleuth, Mina Tindle (born Pauline de Lassus) seems keen to preserve a little mystery on debut Taranta. The singer’s cosmopolitan background – Spanish heritage, French upbringing, a musical awakening in Brooklyn – has cultivated an appealing air of disaffiliation, as she plays with a variety of semblances and freely switches tongues (mostly English, with occasional French and the odd snippet of Spanish).

Naturally, some guises suit better than others: she carries off ‘upbeat indie-popper’ beautifully on To Carry Small Things; ‘melancholic folkie’ a little less so on the Nick Drake-ish Echo, which though pleasant, seems pallid against the more potent emotion exhibited elsewhere. Indeed, inconsistency is Tindle’s only significant foe: she already has both the vocal talent and the compositional wherewithal to nip the heels of express influences like Regina Spektor; now she just needs a steadier identity to channel them.