 mirah advisory committee lp/cd 1. Cold Cold Water 2. After You Left 3. Make it Hot 4. Mt. St. Helens 5. Recommendation 6. Body Below 7. The Sun 8. Advisory Committee 9. Special Death 10. The Garden 11. Light the Match 12. Apples in the Trees 13. Monument 14. Untitled |
Following
up from 2000's remarkably successful, critically hailed debut sleeper
you think its like this but really its like this, our swashbuckling
siren Mirah comes galloping back with both barrels a blazin'. Advisory
Committee is the name, an album bursting at the seams with fourteen
tremendously intricate and dramatically varied songs. Some serious introspection
must have occurred in the year and a half since her debut, for Advisory
Committee exhibits some unparalleled growth in Mirah's already remarkably
elevated songwriting/arranging abilities. Lofty words? Absolutely, but
our confidence has never been higher, for this sophomore album by this
unbridled and deeply talented songwriter delivers the goods in droves.
Mirah has already proven she's no one trick pony, but the fourteen songs which construct Advisory Committee swell with a magnificent, almost transcendent degree of detail, orchestration and variance. From the first tune alone, it is evident that Advisory Committee is not your average solo affair by just any songstress. "Cold Cold Water" charges out of the gate emphatically, lushly layered with a string section, tympani, galloping percussive highlights, pump organ, haunting chamber vocals and of course Mirah's inimitable soaring voice. "Cold Cold Water" is a truly grandiose soundtrack of cinematic proportions, and in its' wake Mirah supplants Ennio Morricone with a sweeping, dust storm epic of her own. As vivid and intricate as any classic movie theme song ever penned. Onward Mirah soldiers, unveiling a lavish satchel of songs which swing across a vast array of instrumentation and arrangements. A simple cross-section reveals synth/bass laden caverns of yearning ("After You Left"), ukulele driven volcanic afterburn ("Mt. St. Helens"), 80's bedroom wave ("Recommendation"), Fiddler on the Roof-style love waltz ("Light the Match"), and ecstatic, strumalong pop narcotic ("Apples in the Trees"); each tune is crafted with subtlety and skill, a potluck of different perspectives brought to the table. Behind it all, bathed in the spotlight, are Mirah's scintillating vocals, blanketing her songs with a soft, smoldering glow. Her voice injects a blushing intimacy to her highly personal lyrics, inviting you into her lair to hear secret accounts of geographic isolation, desire, love, and lust, weighted under robustly sexual allusions.
Rarely do such actualized, well-rounded recordings come down the pike.
Swelling with beauty and perfection in every manner conceivable, Advisory
Committee stands poised to thrust Mirah into the next stratospheric
level. Produced with extreme care by The Microphones' own studio Merlin
Phil Elvrum.
release date: february 2002