Second time around here for Miynt after she’d somehow managed to pass us by. Last time out it was Andy who ran the rule over her AA-sided ‘Give me palm trees and inner peace’ / ‘Lovesong,’ back in October 2020, finding her unique mix of psych and grunge very much to his taste.
Since then she’s released another single, ‘A bite of papaya,’ (she has a quite exotic outlook doesn’t she, what with papayas and palm trees?) and we’ll have to spend some time on the naughty step for overlooking that one as well.
So let’s make it up to her. It appears she has been drifting away from an earlier emphasis on electronic music in favour of a guitar-based sound and continues the transition with another new song, ‘Nothing Personal’, a nostalgic one which is really two in one. Firstly there’s a slow, gentle, unobtrusive verse-chorus-verse acoustic guitar-led section in a Melanie Safka-like voice during which, and just as the hour before dawn is the longest for the condemned prisoner, she wrestles with her own thoughts and the external voices which permeate her skull as she lays a-bed after midnight, unable to sleep.
Exactly what has happened, why it is ‘nothing personal’ and why she would “walk right through” her protagonist remains tantalisingly unclear but that seems to be par for the course these days; I recall a similar degree of confusion surrounding Lydmor’s tête-a-tête with the unknown character in her ‘Nevada’ along with the unanswered question of whom had done what to whom.
Then there’s a lengthy and fairly exhilarating guitar coda, an extension of the chorus, to play the song out and which introduces a distinctly psych-y sound to it. And all held together by just two notes that are mesmerising.
Since her debut album in 2019, Miynt has stayed occupied in the Stockholm arts scene, playing various live shows (pre-pandemic) and notably assembling a 4-piece band for the Miynt project. She has also delved into the world of analogue production and recording live instrumentals. Much of her new material is also self-produced, a skill that Miynt continues to hone.
Miynted, as we say in Manchester.
Miynt is now hard at work on a new album.
‘Nothing personal’ is out now via B3SCI Records.
Find her on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
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