Mina Tindle (FR)

Mina Tindle is set to release her new album, Compass Rosa. Designed as a true remedy for the world’s upheavals, the record brings together intimate and luminous songs – part incantations, part confessions, part serenades. On stage, she offers a sensitive journey through her delicate, poetic pop-folk universe. Her enchanting voice, supported by vibrant, organic arrangements, transforms each concert into an immersive experience that is both fragile and powerful. With Compass Rosa, Mina Tindle invites listeners to return to what really matters and move to the rhythm of music that soothes as much as it moves. A unique evening, balancing tenderness and intensity, not to be missed.

Compass Rosa is more than an album – it’s a remedy. A kind of magical potion that doesn’t make you stronger, but calmer in the face of the world’s challenges, through “songs like blotting paper absorbing the ink of daily life, incantations sung to oneself to move forward, pure serenades, or simple sobs,” as Mina Tindle puts it. And much more.

Since her debut album in 2012, Taranta, Pauline de Lassus, aka Mina Tindle, has followed a consistent path of delicate yet complex pop-folk, poetic no matter what. She enjoys surrounding herself with different collaborators depending on the project, from JP Nataf to Thomas Bartlett to Olivier Marguerit. “What drives me is reflection, dialogue… the surprise of collaboration,” Mina Tindle says. This interplay was also present during the tour for I Am Easy to Find, the album by The National centered around the female figure, featuring Gail Ann Dorsey, Kate Stables, Sharon Van Etten, and Mina Tindle herself.

In 2022, the critical and public acclaim for Dominik Moll’s noir film La Nuit du 12, addressing the devastations of femicide, introduced newcomers to her captivating voice in the final song, “White Flowers,” composed by Olivier Marguerit and Shanti Masud. Up until the pandemic, Mina Tindle was never long without projects: an EP shared with Kate Stables of This Is the Kit, the People festival in Berlin where she paid tribute to Lhasa alongside Leslie Feist, and her mythic album SISTER, released during the Covid lockdown. All of this was necessary – a chance to catch her breath and step back from the music industry. “Too many changes had happened, beyond motherhood, beyond being catapulted into the adult world,” she reflects. “I was stunned by the world, very talkative and aggressive despite the surrounding silence.”

During this restorative retreat, Pauline turned to painting, writing, and illustrating children’s books. After this pause, music called her back – through images first, then through the videos she created for the Labèque sisters, Kate Stables, and The National. At the end of 2023, she began new songs, starting with “Rosa,” dedicated to a beloved grandmother. “My grief will find its shape,” she sings. “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in,” as Leonard Cohen once said. From this tender, mournful melody, abundant inspiration emerged. “I no longer knew how to be a musician, I needed it to feel obvious,” Pauline explains: the lyrics and melodies came naturally as she, for the first time, worked in seclusion with her husband Bryce Dessner. “He knows me best, we are on the same wavelength, we vibrate the same way,” she adds. No words are needed to understand each other, which facilitated the composition of the ten tracks on Compass Rosa, allowing for sonic freedom.

This freedom comes partly from Pauline’s songwriting: always intimate, now more immediate than ever. These songs, addressed to those she loves, were born at home, where she captured the pulse of the seasons on guitar or piano. They form a self-portrait. From the very beginning, the female gaze has been central to Mina Tindle’s creativity, enabling the coexistence of the best (love, friendship, sharing) and the worst (male aggression, the anxiety of a damaged planet).

The artisanal alchemy of the studio further smoothed the structure of Compass Rosa – recorded in five days with David Chalmin. For the first time since stepping back from the stage due to health issues, Sufjan Stevens, a long-time family collaborator, traveled from the U.S. to the Basque home. Ben Lanz played drums and synthesizers… the instincts of those involved, each working freely with the available instruments, created a palpable cohesion. Bryce Dessner’s string arrangements were performed with sensitivity by nine musicians assembled by the Quatuor Zaïde. The result is folk music that embraces classical elements, echoing the authentic work of Adrianne Lenker, Aimee Mann, Aldous Harding, Cat Power (The Greatest era), and even Elvis Presley, with hints of Chico Buarque’s bossa nova.

The guiding thread of Compass Rosa encourages a return to essentials and a search for calm. Sometimes, it takes just one sentence, like that of her son: “The bird sings… Mommy sings.” She gives him courage, confirming that “it’s a privilege to sing and share what you feel.” Ultra-organic, Compass Rosa is rooted in the present, less nostalgic for the past and more open to the future. Its title comes from a wind rose drawn in blue ink on a fishing port, symbolizing the need to maintain a steady course amid surrounding chaos. In epigraph, the words of Fernando Pessoa, sung by Caetano Veloso: “Navigating is necessary; living is not.” The Portuguese word “precisu” (“necessary”) can also mean “precise,” adding a layered meaning. The essential point, Mina Tindle reminds us, is not the destination, but the path, which only appears while walking — and while listening repeatedly to the unforgettable melodies of Compass Rosa.