Mirah

Here's a good one. Mirah has probably been producing some of the finest music money or illegal downloads can buy for years, and yet keeping fairly quiet about it.

Think about it this way. Who's blown up in the past year? Feist (whatever...all it takes today is an iPod commercial Everyone knows that.) Must admit, rather a fan of the song itself though and the full video but Feist is for another day/entry! Anyway, who else? Kate Nash, to some degree Regina Spektor and probably to a bit lesser degree Laura Marling and Laura Veirs. Now who's been creating the same type of music for years and years, yet been traveling so stealthily under the radar for the most part? Why that would be Miss Mirah Yom Tov Zeitlyn.

Mirah may be an even better choice to extrapolate on tonight than I first thought as she is one of those artists whose music invokes more than just a simple "I like" or "I don't", more than even a feeling like "happiness" or "devestation" or "loneliness" but an entire concept. The songs she writes are not simply a feeling, but a feeling and a time and setting. It's spring and early summer. It's that feeling that midwesterners know so well, where you feel as though you've perhaps traveled through the depths of Mordor to make it through the winter to this release of prison, also known as spring and summer. So on a day where it reaches in the 50's in Chicago in February, I have to say that Mirah is an appropriate soundtrack.

First of all, she's one of those people whose voice can predominantly be described as "cute." And yet there's drama. In songs such as "Look Up!" and "Cold cold water" you truly feel the drama amidst distorted sounds and heavy instrumentation. (Honestly, the second of those got so intense that it got to the point where it probably wasn't a good decision to listen to it in my car as I'd be so lost in imagery...somewhere between this and this.) And as soon as it seems like this is a force not to be reckoned with and an artist who is only going to provide heavy, sophisticated music, then she throws everyone for a loop with something like Pollen.

In the end, Mirah is one of the more talented singers I've been made aware of as she can take the most simplistic song or the most complicated arrangement and make them equally appealing and attractive. It's music to skip through spring flowers to, or shiver on the beach to after the sun sets on a summer night. I can't say that there is generally musical accompaniment to either of these actions, but if there were...it should be Mirah.