Mirah "C'mon Miracle" - Pronounced "mear-uh", this is her 3rd full-length album and it is quite nice. Singer-songwriter indie pop that has influences from folk music and even some heavy electronic beats in a few songs. Her vocals are great. Sexy, smoky, and sensual while sometimes coming across as just plain cute. Mostly guitar based music with some piano, drums, strings, and keyboards. She got some help from many of the K records crew on instruments and of course Phil Elverum and Calvin Johnson did the recording. This album is mostly lo-fi indie-pop at heart, but really shows off how she can expand outwards and use pounding distorted drums, weird vocal layerings, and string arrangements to great success. It's quite beautiful. If you like pop, indie, or folk music at all you should definitely check this out.
My Picks: 1, 4, 6, 7, 11
Katie P. 6/28/04

1) Starts with guitar plunking. Slow and soft with sexy smoky vocals. Strings are added making this even more beautiful.
2) Sounds of seagulls start it out and then it launches into a cute indie-pop song. Solid midtempo beat with acoustic and electric guitars and drums.
3) Slower midtempo with harsh pounding beats, almost industrial sound to it. Reminds me a little of Suzanne Vega. Slows and gets cute and sweet with strumming guitar about half through. Stays soft and mellow to the end.
4) Moody guitar progressions. Solid midtempo with a driving beat. Guitar strumming with some droning keyboards here and there.
5) Uptempo with some distortion on the drums and guitar. Vocals have some distortion too. Fun but sung with a sense of urgency.
6) Slow with such cute vocals. Horns come in, but they kind of drone. Wow, weird layers of vocals that whisper/sing. Starts with industrial sounding/electronic beats. Sad lyrics, although a little weird.
7) Country/southwest feel with a midtempo guitar strumming. Some accordion is added when some girl speaks spanish on top. This is really cool, but you still want to start yelling the lyrics to "Rawhide."
8) Slower guitar strumming. Drums are a little electronic sounding. Builds to a midtempo and then drops off a bit.
9) Slow and soft. Guitar picking/strumming and up front vocals. Builds in the middle with organ and then falls off.
10) Slow piano, guitar, and vocals. Smoky and sad vocals. Fades out with about 20 seconds left.
11) Cute guitar struming/picking along with cute soft vocals. Slower and soft. Nice staccato vocal styling similar to the guitars and sweet "ba-da-ba-ba" vocals along with the strings.