Deliciously desirous love tunes and salty lullabies hit you with a sweet force that will gently push you right over. That’s Mirah (pronounced “Mear-Rah”), and for years she’s certainly reigned as the Pacific Northwest’s brightest, yet best kept vocal/songwriting talent. Delivering rich layers of dreamy guitar and seductive vocals, you think it’s like this but really its like this emerges as Mirah’s first full length release, a well-rounded record flowering with tremendous maturity, complexity, and honesty.
Taking center stage are her vocals. Mirah possesses a set of silken pipes that strike your attention immediately. Her voice is remarkably polished, yet it sparkles and radiates with a genuine purity. Launching directly from there, her voice pillows an intelligent lyrical wordplay, sculpting songs that drip with an incredible yearning; songs of love and loss, small town imagery, and clever tales laced with playfully provocative innuendoes. The tunes Mirah creates are wrapped in a colorful and varied musical bow, multi-textured and sonically intoxicating. Utilizing acoustic and electric guitars, these 16 songs are augmented by the alternate use of ukelele, distorted bass, drums, drum programs, vintage organs, and violins. Some tracks (Re: #2, 14) give way with an explosion that belies the extra punch of team producer Phil Elvrum (the Microphones, Old Time Relijun, D+). Others rock you into daydream with sexy sweet, utterly hummy harmonies. Stylistically vacillating between 50’s jazz vocal and modern organic folk/pop/rock songwriting (hinting at the sounds of Cat Power), you think its like this but really its like this is an accomplished debut by a true songwriting talent.
It’s like this: Mirah will pull out your real heart, and rock you into soft oblivion. Produced at Dub Narcotic Studios by Phil Elvrum and on secret bedroom 4-track by Mirah herself.