GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

June 29, 2007

MASSAGE THERAPY

ever

Brian Keating

3052 West Boulevard, Cleveland, Ohio 44111 216-671-0663

You think she's like this, but really

she's like this

Creative and daring indie rocker unleashes a new album and tour

by Anthony Glassman

Indie rock darling Mirah is back with a new album, a collaboration with two members of the Black Cat Orchestra evoking an array of styles from traditional British folk music to Siouxsie and the Banshees.

A new album is one thing. Seeing her live, however, is another thing entirely, and she has two upcoming dates in Ohio, one in Columbus followed days later by a stop in Cleveland.

Share This Place: Stories and Observations by Mirah and Spectratone International is far from the first "experimental" effort from Mirah Yom Tov Zeitlyn, who burst from the scene in the Northwest in 1997 with her first release, an EP called Storageland on Yoyo Records, after performing with the Microphones on a couple of albums.

After that, she jumped to K Records, where she released her first full-length, You Think It's Like This But Really It's Like This, in 2000, followed by the 2001 release Advisory Committee.

Two years later, she tried her first experimental project, Songs From the Black Mountain Music Project, a collaboration with Ginger Brooks Takahashi. The duo locked themselves away while working on the album, toiling in seclusion.

She followed that with To All We Stretch the Open Arm, a collaboration with Kyle Hanson and Lori Goldston, the members of the Black Cat Orchestra with whom she made Share This Place.

To All was an anti-war cover album, featuring the works of Kurt Weill, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan and others.

She then released another solo album, following it up with a collection of remixes from throughout her solo discography.

The new album reunites her with Goldston and Hanson, calling themselves Spectratone International. Joining them in Spectratone are Jane Hall on percussion and Kane Mathis playing the oud, a type of lute from the Middle East.

The album comprises the score of a suite of short animated films by Britta Johnson. Credo Cigalia is included on the disc as a Quicktime file, enabling fans to see what the music connects to, visually.

Curbside

While the conceit makes the songs a little harder to relate to than her earlier work, once they are taken in the context of being a score or soundtrack, it explains the disjointed nature of some of the music and why there are such different auditory aesthetics from track to track.

While Mirah, like a number of other incredible indie artists, is seemingly constantly poised to become the "next big thing," she's rather blasé about the possibility. Much like many indie-rock fans, she likes her stars flying just under the mainstream pop radar.

"Honestly, I'm just as much a culprit of it as the next guy," she said in a 2004 interview with Downhillbattle.org, a music and activism website. "I liked the White Stripes too, saw them in Oly [Olympia, Washington] a couple times, thought they were really good and then what happened?”

"I heard their video was really neat and I bet I'd like their new album but it's just not as interesting to me to be interested any-

NATHAN COMES KNOCKING OR. KIRBY I HAVEN'T SEEN HIM IN LIKE,

O I'M SITTING AROUND IN MY ROOM LATE IN THE A.M., NOT DOING MUCH, WHEN NATHAN SHOWS UP ON MY DOORSTEP, LOOKING WINDED.

NATHAN

You

ALONE

2 WEEKS, SO THIS IS A SURPRISE. I'M STILL PISSED AT HIM, BUT HAPPY AT THE SAME TIME, ESPECIALLY HOW HE SAYS HI AND EVERYTHING.

Impfh /mpfh

The GASPE

more," she continued. "The popular kids are annoying because they used to be just like you and you maybe admire something about them but that's a total secret and so you have to dislike them instead and who wants that syndrome to destroy the precious relationship you have with your secret music love?"

"I'm not condoning this weird psychology but I've never tried to kick the habit either. Maybe we all need some kind of therapeutic process so we can just get over it and revel in the popularizing instead of the disappointment in all that we believe is truly good and deserving of praise," she concluded.

So audiences should love her now but get prepared to hate her because they love her so much but if she ever gets really, really popular they'll have to hide their affection for her.

Continued on facing page

By Robert Kirby

HE KEEPS LOOKING ALL DEEP INTO MY EYES AND SO I FINALLY ASKED HIM WHAT UP.

ARE YOU TRYING TO HYPNOTIZE ME, OR WHAT?

I'M JUST REALLY GLAD TO SEE YOU AGAIN, CAL. YOU'RE

IMPORTANT TO ME.

Pant

UNZIP

GUESS THIS WAS HIS WAY OF SAYING," I LOVE YOU", AND SO I WAS ALL"WOW" AND "AMAZING!

FOR A WHILE, ANYWAY. SO WE GO AT IT FOR A FEW HOURS AFTER THAT WHICH IS MORE "WOW" AND MORE " AMAZING" Bur THEN I START TO THINK ABOUT THAT 2 WEEKS AGO, WHEN I'D LEFT HIM IN TEARS.

८

THIS IS AN AWFULLY BIG, SUDDEN TURNAROUND FOR HIM, THAT'S ALL I'M SAYING.

YOU HUNGRY, BABE? WE COULD GO TO THE MODERN, MY TREAT.

¿ WHAT'D

I Da

ANYWAY?

#366