Mistletone

Artwork by Gloz

Mistletone and 3RRR proudly present Mirah on her first ever Australian tour.

A dearly treasured artist of indie folk devotees, Mirah will tour Australia as a trio, accompanied by multi-instrumentalist Dave Depper (Norfolk & Western, Jolie Holland) and acclaimed Portland artist Rachel Blumberg, who has drummed for The Decemberists, Bright Eyes and M. Ward.

A live performer of great intelligence and warmth, Mirah has a posse of obsessed fans thanks to her hugely acclaimed albums on respected Pacific Northwest label K Records including C’mon Miracle, Advisory Committee, You Think It’s Like This but Really It’s Like This, Joyride: Remixes and last year’s gorgeous (a)spera.

Don’t miss the long awaited chance to hear this prodigiously talented and endlessly creative lady breathe life into her resonant songs of love, loss and magic.

To quote triple j’s Zan Rowe: “One of my favourite songwriters, Mirah hails from that goldmine of good music, the Pacific North-west of the United States. A lot of creative types come from these shores… there must be something in the water. For years Mirah Yom Tov Zeitlyn has been making intensely personal, sweet, and musically adventurous songs. Sometimes folk, sometimes gypsy, sometimes electronic, sometimes noise. She rarely repeats herself and always hits that place in your chest where it just kills you to listen to her stories.”

MIRAH TOUR DATES
+ special guests The Smallgoods

SYDNEY THURSDAY 21 OCTOBER @ RED RATTLER w/- The Smallgoods + Shiver Like Timber.
Playing times: Doors 8pm, Shiver Like Timber 8.30pm, The Smallgoods 9.20pm, Mirah 10.30pm.

BRISBANE FRIDAY 22 OCTOBER @ LOFLY HANGAR w/- The Smallgoods + Epithets + Moses Gunn Collective. Presales now closed – tickets $40 at the door.
Playing times: Doors 7.30pm, Moses Gunn Collective 8.30pm, Epithets 9.15pm, The Smallgoods 10.15pm, Mirah 11.15pm.

MELBOURNE SATURDAY 23 OCTOBER @ NORTHCOTE SOCIAL CLUB w/- The Smallgoods + Wintercoats. Tickets from the venue.
Playing times: Doors 8.30pm, Wintercoats 9pm, The Smallgoods 10.10pm, Mirah 11.20pm.

SUNDAY 24 OCTOBER @ NORTHCOTE SOCIAL CLUB w/ The Ancients + MSG (Mia Schoen Group). Tickets on sale from the venue.
Playing times: Doors 7.30pm, Mia Schoen 8pm, The Ancients 9pm, Mirah 10pm.

Mirah (full name Mirah Yom Tov Zeitlyn) has won legions of devoted fans around the world with her striking lyrical poise and unabashed emotional honesty. She has released five albums on K Records which are revered as classics in the indie folk music canon, expanding the boundaries of ‘indie-rock’ towards a more meaningful, communicative goal.

Mirah has collaborated extensively with artists such as the Black Cat Orchestra, singer-songwriter Phil Elverum of The Microphones/Mt. Eerie and Brooklyn-based artist and musician Ginger Brooks Takahashi. She followed up her early recordings with a collection of cover songs, To All We Stretch the Open Arm, an anti-war statement which included renditions of Leonard Cohen’s Story of Isaac and Kurt Weill’s What Keeps Mankind Alive.

Mirah’s third solo album C’mon Miracle (2004) combined the ever-present youthful splendor of her earlier works with a more mature stylistic component, which led many critics to hail it as her best work to date. Several other projects followed: a sonic expedition, Joyride: Remixes featuring dance remixes of Mirah’s solo work by artists such as Jona Bechtolt (Yacht), a collaboration with Spectratone International, Share This Place: Stories and Observations which became a multi-media performance featuring stop motion animation by Britta Johnson and 12 songs based in part on the writings of the influential French scientist/poet Jean Henri Fabre.

Last year Mirah unveiled her latest full length solo album, (a)spera (distributed locally by Inertia) which mixed her trademark lyrical sincerity with innovative instrumentation, featuring members of The Decemberists and engineered by M Ward and Sufjan Stevens’ producers. It won huge critical acclaim worldwide with a Metacritic rating of 82 out of 100, and locally won triple j rotation as well as constant airplay on FBi, 2SER and other community radio around the country.

Paste magazine review:

Northwest chanteuse gets gentle, elemental

If there is a Mother Earth, it may as well be Olympia, Washington’s Mirah Yom Tov Zeitlyn, who coos coyly and with care, who has been championed by those preservationists of primitive innocence, who has reveled in understated arrangements of her girlish wisdom, and who has now, on (a)spera, sung out a sweet and transcendent lament for the natural world with all its inhabitants. Opener “Generosity” reveals the songstress alternating between the perspective of bountiful nature (“I’ve given you all of my energy) and a grieving human who realizes too late all that has been taken and can’t be replaced (“these clouds we’ve made cannot make rain”). It’s a Giving Tree scenario, spun out with strings and a subdued power-ballad build, and it sets the stage for the worldly decay catalogued throughout (a)spera with the help of several gifted collaborators, including Kane Mathis (who provides gorgeous baroque kora work in “Shells”) and Bryce Panic (who creates the serene kalimba base for winding closer “While We Have the Sun”). Mirah’s position here isn’t so much that of a hectoring, pragmatic environmentalist; rather, with broader thoughts, wide eyes and open heart, she asks in “The World Is Falling Apart”: “Why were you not built for wonder? / Why will you never get enough?” They’re queries convincingly put forth in a voice like Mirah’s—slicked with sap and curled like a cat’s tail—floating above arrangements like those of (a)spera: burnt, flowing, cooled and whispered, like the elements of our earth.