No Roots. One hit. So far, those are Alice Merton‘s stats. But the globetrotting young pop-rocker — who has reportedly lived in a dozen cities (including Oakville, Ont.) over the course of her 25 years thanks to her father’s mining-industry job — aims to get those numbers up with the release of her debut album Mint. And who knows? She just might pull it off. Granted, nothing here delivers the same level of instant gratification as the autobiographical synth-pop earworm No Roots. But thanks to their fuzzy licks and pouty vocals, garage-pop nuggets like Learn to Live and Lash Out aren’t far behind. Ditto funky stompers like Funny Business, Trouble in Paradise and I Don’t Hold A Grudge. She may not be reinventing the pop wheel, but at least she’s putting her own refreshing spin on it.
