Mirah - (a)spera reviews

Reviews by letter : A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y 

Mirah picture

More about Mirah


Lyrics

Videos

Images

Biography

Reviews

Wallpapers

Mirah - (a)spera



Mirah - (a)spera review


Send "Mirah " Ringtones to your Cell 

   Allmusic
Calling an album "mature" can be damning it with faint praise, but Mirah's luminous (A)spera embodies the best qualities of that word. While it might be subtler and gentler than most of her previous work, it also feels like a summation of everything that came before it. Advisory Committee was a gloriously audacious sprawl that showed exactly what Mirah was capable of -- which was a lot -- and C'mon Miracle was a reassuring shoulder to cry on, but (A)spera finds a delicate, sometimes tense balance between adventurousness and empathy. Above all, the album emphasizes just how remarkable Mirah's voice and words are: after more than a decade of recording, her voice is still light and girlish but with a knowing delivery; likewise, her lyrics are passionate yet clear-eyed. These dualities express (A)spera's emotional shades of shades of gray elegantly and eloquently. "Shells" explores the almost imperceptible line between holding and suffocating a loved one to Kane Mathis' lilting kora, while "Education" is an alt-country-tinged study in learning by leaving that hinges on the chorus "I'll never change/You'll never change." Yet, for an album steeped in complex moods, (A)spera is remarkably engaging, and a lot of that has to do with its creative, organically evolving sounds. (A)spera opens with two of its most striking moments. "Generosity"'s distorted drums and guitars, tremulous strings, and declaration of independence make it feel like a cousin to "Cold Cold Water," which began Advisory Committee with a similarly dramatic cloudburst. "The World Is Falling Apart," meanwhile, is deceptively understated, with barely there yet looming drums, droning synth bass, and cresting backing vocals setting the song on its voyage. Elsewhere, "The Forest"'s cautionary tale of greed delves into majestic tribal rock, "Country of the Future" serves up a tale of love and independence with carnival drums and sinuous strings, and an ethereal gamelan-inspired version of "While We Have the Sun" -- which originally appeared on Songs from the Black Mountain Music Project -- closes (A)spera on a meditative note. However, it's "The River" that really captures the album's unique complexity and directness: Mirah sounds like she's singing right in your ear, gently delivering bold-faced truths like "You don't want to hurt me/But you don't want to need me" as brass and woodwinds flow around her. This kind of sophisticated indie pop and singer/songwriter territory is all her own, and (A)spera holds almost as much wisdom as it does hope....full text

   Dustedmagazine
Mirah’s songs have always fallen somewhere between a caress and a snap, her biting clever words woven around achingly soft melodies, her love songs skewered with unblinking, sometimes lacerating, observations. There is a precision in her best relationship songs that makes you sure they are about specific people, even as you draw parallels with your own experience. C’mon Miracle in 2004 diverged slightly from this type of material, as she tried her hand at geopolitics and religion. With this fourth solo full-length, she’s back to her home territory, observing interpersonal relationships with seductive charm and wicked clarity. There is no “Jerusalem” in (a)spera.


Yet while (a)spera focuses on the bonds and obstacles between people, it reflects a changing, perhaps maturing perspective. “Generosity,” the first song on the album, might be about the death of a parent or the disintegration of a love affair – it is clearly concerned with ends, rather than beginnings. Its swooning violin and cello, its cooling breeze of whispered oohs, none of this can entirely mask the smell of frustration. Indeed the piece ends with Mirah in exhausted contention with herself. “I won’t give more,” she sings, and is answered by a chorus of herself singing “We want more.”


Mortality makes more overt appearances later in the album, serving as the main theme in some of Mirah’s most beautiful compositions. Death is implied in a delicate couplet that opens “Bones and Skin” (“If you live inside the old graveyard / your skin and bones get kind of hard / you blame it on all of the ones who left you”) and embedded in the xylophoned atmospherics of “While We Have the Sun.” (“And if you want to face the death / you’re never that far from / just take a breath and sing to it when all the day is done.”) It is, perhaps, one of Mirah’s great strengths that she can couch the heaviest of subject matters in songs that feel as light as air....full text

   Popmatters
Hope and hardship are so inexorably linked that they might as well be the same word. Hope is like a fragile pane of glass that separates us from the harsh reality of our lives, periodically shattered, leaving us torn and miserable. We’d be fine if it hadn’t been there in the first place, but could we have endured so long with out it? Best to bandage ourselves and and hope it won’t happen again. “So it goes,” as Kurt Vonnegut might say. Nodding her head in agreement would be K Records’ Mirah, whose fourth solo album of grandly swelling sorrow, (a)spera, parenthetically combines the Latin words for hope and hardship (spera, and aspera, respectively). Those Italians know their stuff.

Over the past decade, Mirah has staked out a corner of the indie world for herself as a tender poet of heartbreak, vulnerability, and isolation whose work is always as musically compelling as it is personally poignant. “Cold, Cold Water”, the lead single from her 2001 debut, Advisory Committee, is a stirring mix of strings, thundering horse-hoof percussion, and breathy vocals that paints Mirah as a avenging cowgirl of love, both figuratively and literally—she’s astride a horse, twirling a lasso above her head in the seven-inch’s artwork.

Amazon
Lala

She hasn’t changed much in the ensuing years, much to this fan’s delight. She’s still singing about love and loss, in that same adorably vulnerable voice. The booming percussion is still courtesy of Phil Elvrum, who forever proved the emotional impact a drum can have in his previous life as the Microphones. The producer of just a third of the album’s tracks, he shares production duties with Tucker Martine (The Decemberists, Sufjan Stevens) and Adam Selzer (M.Ward). Not every song can be an epic piece of mind-blowing pop, and these others add a delicate touch to a few tender numbers....full text

Send "Mirah " Ringtones to your Cell 


Mirah lyrics

All lyrics are property and copyright of their owners. All lyrics provided for educational purposes only
Copyright © www.sweetslyrics.com Please read our Privacy policy - 0.0182s