Mirabilia
Log in Eye
Seksound
I know as much about Estonian pop music as I do about all other aspects of Estonian contemporary culture, which is to say, nothing. It seems like it might be a pretty exotic proposition, but Mirabilia’s Log in Eye is surprisingly familiar.
The album is the definition of genre-spanning. Pick a track at random and you might hear shades of Frog Eyes (“TV Eyes”), Yo La Tengo (“Breeze”), The Cure (“Pretty Face”), Jefferson Airplane (“Let it Shine”), or Movietone (“Pale Earth”). But, this doesn’t mean the band is the equivalent of an indie rock cover band. It’s more that the inspiration roster sets an eclectic framework on which the band can build; there aren’t any weak retreads here. Songwriter Holger Loodus injects enough off-kilter vocal and musical arrangements throughout the album to make American listeners take a pause.
After sitting through Log in Eye a number of times, I still don’t feel like I have a good handle on Estonian pop music, but I’m fully convinced that Mirabilia knows American indie rock inside and out.
Seksound: http://www.seksound.com
