Mirah
C’mon Miracle
K / Secretly Canadian
C’mon Miracle is more expressively intimate than her first two albums, but Mirah Yom Tov Zeitlyn is still not the artist you go to for simple comforts and lush melodies. Try to describe her music and one invariably ends up with accurate yet misleading terms like “folksy,” “na•ve,” “honest,” “delicate,” and “lush.” These are terms that are accurate enough, yet ultimately wildly misleading, wrongfully placing her beside the myriad of acoustic singer-songwriters, when in fact Mirah has very few if any peers on the current music scene.
One of her few compatriots is Phil Elvrum of the Microphones, who appears on this record as on her two former ones. The comparison with Microphones (and other colleagues on K Records) holds for a while, but not entirely, as Mirah relies less on the lo-fi aesthetic as such, and more on basic, even simplistic, melodies, gently fucked up by expansive arrangements. Distorted drums unsettle apparently idyllic songs, weird electronic samples break up childlike rhymes, her naivety never one-sided, regularly offset and disturbed by unexpected melodic moves and dark, unveiling lyrics.
Mirah crams more twists and turns into one single song than most artists can hope to display in their entire careers, although in Mirah’s case, it never seems to be done without consideration for the song in question, her musical oddities always stressing the ambivalence of the songs and her lyrics. From the droning “We’re Both So Sorry” to the devastatingly beautiful “You’ve Gone Away Enough,” and from the intimate “Nobody Has to Stay” to the wonderful “Look Up!,” Mirah has carved another amazing album where everything falls into place, different from her earlier works, yet still bearing her unique artistic touch. One of this year’s most satisfying and successful albums.
K Records: [www.krecs.com/](http://www.krecs.com/)
