Review Summary: The wonder of lo-fi, revisited.
It's raining outside. Not the whiny pitter-patter rain, but big blobs of water that fall a little heavy. The big green grass field you can see outside the window's now a decent shade of olive. And right in the middle is a girl. She couldn't be more than twenty five, and doesn't look too concerned that she's in the middle of an olive green field with big blob rain. She's sitting on an old plastic chair with an acoustic guitar that's a size too big. It's a pleasant picture, and though she's singing to no one in particular, you can hear it loud and clear.
Mirah's is one of those folksy singers you watch in the background of any movie on bluegrass or well, music in general. You Think is her sophomore effort that was released in mid-2000. This was four years before she started touring with an actual band.
She's simple, measured and very precise. She sings about relationships and how everything's so frail and how you don't really need to sleep with someone to be their friend forever. Thematically, it's not very different from what you'd get from say Tori Amos, but that's not what you're listening for. This record preceded Advisory Committee in which our little Jewish girl suddenly went indie-folk-punk, and though she was still the same, You Think was really the record with which Mirah came of age.
I can't say I've heard many better female indie singer/songwriters than her. It's the sort of naive innocence with which she makes the most hard to deal with, and mundane issues seem so blunt and well, stupid. It's like she's laughing at us for taking ourselves too seriously, but then, she's actually laughing
with us. It's all relationship-py mold in the end, but at least it's not boring. She experiments plenty, and it doesn't seem out of place that she goes from simple folk (Archipelago) to light jazz (Words Cannot Describe). She could be caught for being a little casual, but you'd forgive her as easily as you'd hit repeat when the record ended.
It's lo-fi recording at its very best. Like the plucky acoustic on the opener Million Miles - it doesn't betray any false sense of despair as do the lyrics. Mirah was my Laura Veirs of 2006, and both ladies will be out with new records this year, which leads me to believe that the monsoon's going to be fun.
In Jewish, her name means "good day", and that's a promise that her music keeps.
