I hate – I really hate – to just quote the blurb from a record’s publicity chappies. Let’s face it, you lot have Google, you don’t need me to just regurgitate information for you, but in the case of this album it’s really quite interesting:

In 2006 Portland Institute for Contemporary Art commissioned collaborators Lori Goldston and Kyle Hanson of Spectratone International to create an insect-inspired song cycle with K Records recording artist Mirah. Set to a suite of 12 short animated films by Britta Johnson, the resulting multi-media performance premiered at Seattle International Children’s Festival in May 2007.

Influenced in part by the writings of 19th century French naturalist J. Henri Fabre (called “The Homer of Insects” by Victor Hugo), Share This Place also draws from Karel Capek’s surrealist Insect Play and a host of other sources. Layered with the luxuriant sounds of Spectratone International, Mirah’s beautifully delivered lyrics combine an epic scale and intimate tone.

Er, what? I find myself asking. Well it sounds for all the world like a peculiar musical, which is I suppose in part explained by the provenance of the album itself. In this sense it’s quite Tom Waits-y – that other lover of slightly bonkers theatre music – although still very much part of that ‘eccentric female literary drama-pop’ landscape that I was so scathing about last week.

In truth, some of this album is squarely in the part of that territory that I find a bit too yelpsomely irritating, but the other half – and it is just about half – makes for an intriguingly arranged exercise in jazzy fairytales. It could almost, some of it, have been the soundtrack to Tim Burton’s rather excellent adaptation of Roald Dahl’s James & the Giant Peach. The instrumentation is often quite cabaret chanteuse style – accordions, plucked guitar and eerie violins – and Mirah’s voice is the perfect fit.

So it’s not exactly a perfect album, from the perspective of this recalcitrant indie kid, but it’s intriguing, and there’s plenty of really good songs here in amongst the more mental ones. Definitely worth investigating, people, although I would advise you to do so with caution.

Mirah & Spectratone International – Supper
Mirah & Spectratone International – Community

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