In any given year, you don't have to look far for examples of the American imagination's eternal fascination with the French chanteuse. "Mad Men"'s most memorable moment this season had Anglophiles everywhere humming along with the coquettish, yé-yé ditty "Zou Bisou Bisou"; Wes Anderson's forthcoming Moonrise Kingdom uses the music of Francoise Hardy to conjure the blissful aura of young love; and then there was that time last week when the tidal wave of search results that came when you typed "Jane Birkin looking cool in a boatneck" into Tumblr made your browser crash. Still, 28-year-old Parisian-born singer-songwriter Mina Tindle reminds us that the moss is always greener on the other side of the pond. As a teen, Tindle idolized Chan Marshall (she cites the first time she heard Cat Power's simmering cover of "Satisfaction" as a formative musical moment), spent some time living as an ex-pat in Brooklyn, and later found inspiration in the fluttering pop of Leslie Feist. More of a folksy sophisticate than ye-ye throwback, Tindle's sweetly languid cover of "Be My Baby" that made the internet rounds leading up to the release of her debut LP Taranta sounded like a piece of bubblegum dissolving in rosewater.
Tindle got the name Taranta from a sensual and frantic old Italian folk dance that celebrates mad women, specifically those whose madness was induced by a spider's bite. Apart from its lack of arachnid references, it's a relatively apt title, as Tindle sets out to animate her tracks' refined pop structures with the leaping, kinetic energy of movement and dance. It works to great effect on "Too Loud", a song about the fatigue of wanderlust that begins with the gentle but antsy plinks of a toy piano, like a music box in fast motion. "Abroad or at home/ I feel lost," she sings, her vocals lilting and agile as the track's momentum gathers, "But if he called my name, just took my name/ Then I would stop my travels." The single "To Carry Many Small Things" has a similar energy, but it trades with the breathlessness of "Too Loud" for an assertion of cool control; both songs have the feel of a pop-foxtrot, and on "To Carry Many Small Things" she takes the lead with flair. Still, chorus reveals a nagging desire to fall out of step and into the blissful chaos of love: "If I fall/ Would you fall with me?"
Moody French folk-pop artist J.P. Nataf (whom Tindle cites as another of her musical idols) produced Taranta. His touch is fittingly light, making sure that the arrangements are detail-oriented and textured but never so much that they overwhelm Tindle's voice. Although Tindle's style is at its most distinct during the aforementioned buoyant, piano-driven songs, Taranta is heaviest on the acoustic folk ballads, which range from quietly affecting ("Echo") to cloyingly cheery ("Lovely Day"). But other than the blithely sighing "Pan", none of this material demonstrates what sets Tindle apart from the artists she most closely resembles, namely Feist's down-tempo tracks or the recent work of Charlotte Gainsbourg. And since these sort of songs dominate the record, much of Taranta ends up feeling a little faceless.
The disappointment of Taranta is how Tindle's professed fascination with madness, spider bites, and the hellish melancholy of early Cat Power records doesn't quite manifest in her music; and however unfair it is to measure a new artist's debut by the benchmarks of one of her idols, Taranta is decidedly more Jukebox than The Covers Record. Tindle's songbird range is melodious but-- on Taranta, at least-- limited, and it often feels like she's flitting across the surface of the feelings that her songs explore, rather than nose-diving in. Still, Taranta's not completely without substance to back up its breezily cool style. In its most dynamic moments, it hints at Tindle's potential to go off the beat of her inspirations and her peers-- or maybe even find the nerve to let herself fall.
