Maria Minerva - Soft Power (2020)

Tallinn’s top leftfield pop export breaks her half-decade solo hiatus with a choice collection of daydream discotheque classics: Soft Power. Recorded between Hollywood and Calabasas over the last few years, and co-produced by Dzang studio pro Adam Gunther, the album is pure Minerva: high and low, heady and hedonistic, deadpan diva designs for neon nights and mirage dance floors.

She starts off seductive (“hey pretty baby it’s been a while / haven’t seen your lovely face for a long time”), then sways through an array of bedroom bangers and crushed crystalline ballads, crooning and swooning, autobiographical electronica spanning Detroit to New York, London to L.A. Songs of intimacy and illusion, impatience and introspection, of cutting loose and being cut off, left wanting more: “Taste this love till the morning sun.”