MINIPOP > A New Hope

Tricia Kanne’s voice has a built-in deadpan mechanism, but her singing fits perfectly into the chilly, relaxed structures producer Chris Manning has worked up for Minipop’s A New Hope. This is pop as conceived in the late-80s, and you can hear echoes of Pavement in the contrived fade-out of “Wearing Thin,” and a reminder of His Name Is Alive vocalist Karin Oliver in Kanne’s detached, but oddly soulful, singing. 

Label: TAKE ROOT
[Rating: 3.5]

Tricia Kanne’s voice has a built-in deadpan mechanism, but her singing fits perfectly into the chilly, relaxed structures producer Chris Manning has worked up for Minipop’s A New Hope. This is pop as conceived in the late-80s, and you can hear echoes of Pavement in the contrived fade-out of “Wearing Thin,” and a reminder of His Name Is Alive vocalist Karin Oliver in Kanne’s detached, but oddly soulful, singing. On the sneaky, seductive “Like I Do,” the Bay Area quartet concocts one of the year’s best tracks. When Kanne sings, “There will come a time/When everybody you know/Will say goodbye,” you feel alive in present time. “Fingerprints” sports a tensile guitar riff that nicely contrasts with a wordless hook that goes, “Ooh-ooh-ooh/Ah-ah-ah.” With its moderate tempos and meticulously maintained equilibrium, A New Hope is simultaneously flinty and abstracted-no easy combination to pull off.