When one hits the line "I've got 28 square feet of skin, it's the cage I'm in" within 45 seconds of the opening of a band's debut album, it's clear that the Land of Quirkiness is within sight. Although
Minikin occasionally skirts indie folk cuteness,
Hinterlander leader Heidi Nelms is no trying-too-hard-to-be-weird poseur like
Devendra Banhart. Her singing voice is engagingly offbeat, but stable in pitch and tone, and she sings her own oblique lyrics with the calm self-assurance of someone who isn't just stringing random words and syllables together. With the help of multi-instrumentalist
Will Moore, the L.A.-bred, Hawaii-based singer/songwriter creates acoustic guitar-based settings for her songs that enhance the giddy neo-psychedelia of songs like "Cake to Burn" and "The Gold in a Frog's Eye"; indeed, comparisons to solo
Robyn Hitchcock are not far off the mark. Some might find the overall vibe of wide-eyed faux innocence a bit too mannered, but
Minikin is a record that could be awful, yet is oddly endearing. ~ Stewart Mason