Holy Pinto – Congratulations

It’s a fine line between sounding as curious and intriguing as Death Cab For Cutie and The Weakerthans, or simply coming across as bored out of your mind.  Either a band spins a story with a poignant tongue and minimalist backdrop, or sounds like a lazy neighbour yawning through a late dinner.  Effective indie-pop acts like Midwestern Charm and The Great Albatross demonstrate such a delicate balance, while imitators like Sandman Viper Command and The Lonely Forest fall flat.  So how do newcomers Holy Pinto stack up for their debut full length?  The English duo encouragingly pens their music with the poise and finesse necessary of such soft spoken musicianship.  

Congratulations emerges with a fulfilling, deeply encompassing, melodic disposition.  Lead vocalist Aymen sings with a colloquial quality that highlights his Canterbury accent with flattering effect.  Holy Pinto demonstrates an impressive range of execution ranging from pensively upbeat, to somber reflection.  Opener “Matchless” saunters in with chords that feel as if they carry the weight of the world upon each burdensome note, leading to a tempo-rich, choral crest complete with humming organ keys and occasional saxophone blast.  Follow-up “Hospital Room” jumpstarts the instrumental pacing, giving way to nostalgic imagery in the opening line, “it’s such a pretty hospital room, it’s like an old hotel that we once went to.”  Telling a story through the distant, ghostly imagery of years long since past, Holy Pinto builds a strikingly emotive scene that concludes some tracks later in somber album closer, “Flowers (with Hospital pt 2).”  Such musical and lyrical continuity weaves through Congratulations with precision and purpose.

While the songs could be characterised as passive and non-descript, on the contrary, each track burrows like a subtle earworm in their seamless amalgamation of indie-pop, punk and emo.  Take the slow moving little number, “Tooth,” which initially jangles along to a simple verse of lurching, noodly chords, and eventually takes off into a fully accelerated drum beat.  “Floripa” further ups the pace with a certain buoyant skip in its step, while “Phantom Pain” smartly plays off the subtle emerging pain of loss.  Though minimalist in style, Holy Pinto maximizes their execution with surprisingly deep payoff for listeners that put their time in.

Congratulations is one of those albums that unassumingly sneaks into your playlists and will stay there for weeks on end.  You won’t find anything terribly innovative in the album’s track list, but the penmanship and songwriting quality of each composition makes for an altogether thoughtful runthrough.  Holy Pinto may be newcomers to the realm of minimalist indie-pop, but that hasn’t stopped this duo from writing songs sure to earn them some well-deserved attention.