Mint Field Sentimiento Mundial

The Spanish language is having a renaissance in alternative music this summer; Pamplona quartet Melanas’ lysergic garage pop sophomore Dias Raros fizzed with all the joy of The Modern Lovers this June, Madrid royalty Hinds then debuted their mother tongue in arena-ready lo-fi on The Prettiest Curse, while Mexican psych duo Lorelle Meets The Obsolete’s Re-Facto re-worked their synth-heavy De Facto storm on Sonic Cathedral to sound like a cornerstone of krautrock.

Tijuana-via-Mexico City fuzz two-piece Mint Field make an exhilarating addition to the list with their second album Sentimiento Mundial. Its heart is deft and dreaming shoegaze – foggy dissonance wormholes through feverish guitars, feedback and a rhythm section bolstered by collaborators in Cathy Lucas (Vanishing Twin), Callum Brown (Ulrika Spacek) and Nathan Pigott. Estrella del Sol’s softly supernatural vocal recalls the late Trish Keenan of Broadcast with an eerie beauty, unifying Mint Field’s harvest from the ambient ‘Le Hable a La Ola Del Mar’ to the ‘Sister Ray’-era proto-punk-cum-Spacemen 3-worthy noise-throb of ‘No Te Caigas’ and Morricone twang of ‘Delcadeza’.

Sentimiento Mundial flies through harmony and discord with the gaiety of shoegaze’s fuzzed-out best. Even its quieter moments could nestle alongside Slowdive’s Pygmalion as noteworthy slices of escapism. But there’s an energetic, driving pulse that makes these hypno-jams a strangely propulsive and contemporary listen; in a genre typified by floating structures and hazy atmospherics, Mint Field are cloudbusting for clarity.