Piñata presenta: Mild Orange

A breezy jangle pop band from New Zealand's South Island, Mild Orange rode a mellow wave of viral success in 2018 when their self-released debut. Foreplay, was streamed into the millions. Their grassroots success helped build a global fan base for their 2020 follow-up.

Honouring the title of their third and most recent album, Mild Orange are like floating in space. You can tell that this New Zealand trio knows where they come from: from the tradition of the best jangle pop, from the so-called kiwi pop of the antipodes and from the lineage of exquisite bands from Dunedin, the city in whose university they met, the illustrious saga of The Chills, The Bats, The Clean and The Verlaines. Historic indie pop bands of the eighties and nineties.

But vocalist and guitarist Josh Mehrtens, guitarist Josh Reid, bassist Tom Kelk and drummer Jack Ferguson don't stop there. They revitalize that tradition, update it, adapt it to the times and manage to compete with other ambrosias of yesterday and today such as The Go-Betweens or Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever. 

Their thing is levitating atmospheres, delicate guitars and dreamy melodies, like those found on the hypnotizing Looking For Space (2022), their most recent release. A real delicatessen.