“I have this game that I play,” Mirah says as we walk through
her Northeast Portland neighborhood. “It’s called ‘Hello.'”
I watch her play it with a passerby. “Hi there,” she says
cheerfully, and the man fumbles back a pleasantry. “I like to see what
people do,” she tells me once he’s out of earshot. “Because sometimes
people don’t even look at me! And I’m not a scary or intimidating
person, so that couldn’t be the reason, but….”
Mirah is definitely not intimidating; she’s actually the complete
opposite, but listening to her austere, intelligent music might give
you the idea that she’s got bigger things on her mind than making
casual conversation with strangers. In some ways, though, that kind of
reaching out is what she is most interested in.
Her latest is called (a)spera, and it’s the first album that
she’s recorded in Portland, her home of six years. It’s a wonderfully
moving album, with varied arrangements that aren’t sparse, but
deliberate—not a single note is missing, and none of the ones
used are wasted, beginning with the baroque, acerbic “Generosity,” and
moving on to the echoing gong and unsettled current of “The World Is
Falling.” The gently plucked kora (an African harp) of “Shells”
is soothing and otherworldly, while the chugging guitar and booming
drums of “The Forest” feels primeval, and “The River” is a hypnotic,
gorgeous blend of guitars, synth hums, and dark brass. While no song
resembles another, it’s all held together by Mirah’s powerfully girlish
voice, raising the heavy material to what becomes a welcoming, almost
effervescent greeting.
“Every song seems to call for very different treatment, and that’s
why they all end up sounding so different,” she says. “It’s really
based on each song. I don’t have a routine. I often need to hear
something before I can think it, and I also work very collaboratively
with people. It’s trial and error.”
Back at her home, she runs into the other room and brings back a
book. “Have you ever heard of this?” she asks. It’s Murmurs of
Earth by Carl Sagan, a book about the twin Voyager spacecrafts that
were launched in 1977 and are still floating deeper into space. Each of
the probes contains a golden phonograph record that includes pictures
and sounds from Earth, including greetings in dozens of different
languages and a broad cross-section of different types of music made by
humans, from Bach concertos to Blind Willie Johnson blues to Indonesian
gamelan. It’s mankind’s proverbial message in a bottle, sent into outer
space with the unlikely but optimistic hope that aliens might discover
it. “I just love this idea,” Mirah says.
She hints that (a)spera might be her own murmur of Earth, an
idea that’s carried out on the album’s Barbarella-influenced
cover art, right down to the “space undies!” as she calls them. While
Mirah’s not envisioning some alien race discovering her music in a
million years, she’s chosen an apt metaphor for communication on a more
direct level. For every word or idea that people share, for every
emotion that we direct at one another, there is a measureless void of
black space and the chilling possibility that our transmission might
not be received. But Mirah knows the importance of sending out the
messages and maintaining faith that they’ll be heard—a cosmic
game of “Hello” played with the universe.
