Review by Heather Phares
A much quieter and more thoughtful album than any of her previous releases, Mirah's C'Mon Miracle doesn't grab the listener by the ears and boldly proclaim its greatness the way that her last album, Advisory Committee, did. Instead of offering the scattershot brilliance of that album or You Think It's Like This but It's Really Like This, C'Mon Miracle is more focused, more mature, and closer to a traditional singer/songwriter's work. This doesn't mean that it's conventional or boring though -- far from it. Even though the subtlety and complexity of songs like "Nobody Has to Stay" and "Promise to Be Kind" show how much her craft has grown over the years, the album still has enough of a K Records feel to keep fans of Mirah's smart, creative indie pop happy. The wonderfully sympathetic artist-producer relationship between her and Phil Elvrum is a key part of C'Mon Miracle, helping to balance the album's more serious leanings and her more whimsical-sounding earlier work. For the most part, Elvrum's production is understated and far less busy than that of Advisory Committee. On songs like "Jerusalem" -- which was intended for a Hanukkah compilation but rejected because it was too political (it criticizes Israel's hawkish behavior in the most poetic terms) -- he sets Mirah's voice like a jewel, surrounding it with pretty but unobtrusive arrangements. However, that just means that C'Mon Miracle's elaborately produced moments stand out even more. "The Light" -- which appeared on Mirah's collaboration with the Black Cat Orchestra, To All We Stretch the Open Arm, with a very different arrangement -- gets the deluxe Elvrum treatment: it begins with distant, quasi-industrial percussion and stormy guitars and ends on a surprisingly gentle note. "We're Both So Sorry" is even more elaborate, using autoharp, brass, double-tracked vocals, fuzzed-out percussion, and guitars to underscore the duality of the song's breakup lament. These songs, along with "The Struggle" (on which Elvrum is credited with playing the chest), recall Advisory Committee's glory, and even though it's tempting to want all of C'Mon Miracle to sound like this, the album does have its own distinctive character, particularly on the tracks inspired by Mirah's trip to Buenos Aires; "Don't Die in Me" and especially "The Dogs of B.A." integrate Latin folk influences into her sound effortlessly. "Look Up," meanwhile, rocks harder than anything she's ever done before, and the charming chamber pop of "Exactly Where We're From" also proves that Mirah hasn't forsaken the eclectic spirit of her music. An album about war, peace, and longing, C'Mon Miracle isn't as showy as some of her previous outings, but it does show that Mirah's music works on both a large and small scale.
I know nothing about Mirah Yom Tov Zeitlyn's early years but I always assumed that The Microphones' most promising alumna grew up in a commune-- the kind where children tend to their own herb garden, perform light kitchen duty and rotate ownership of a bicycle. This (admittedly reductive) theory would explain not only the persistent whiff of the campfire that hovers about Mirah's music, but also her staggering lack of self-consciousness. A terrific songwriter when she bothers to finish her songs, Mirah finds her own creativity fascinating enough to share every stage of the process with her listeners: To date, her albums have brimmed with sketches, songlets, snatches of ambiance (crickets, etc.) and private snapshots of in-studio fun. At times, this 60/40 mix of confessional folk and art brut collage has felt somewhat unnatural and not a little indulgent.
At the same time, Mirah's blissed-out obliviousness to form and format has kept fans and critics in suspense: It was clear that as soon as she dropped the shtick, a great album would follow. Teasers were plentiful-- the Cinemascope sweep of "Cold Cold Water" chief among them-- but the record she hinted at didn't arrive until now. If all the past tense hasn't tipped you off already, C'mon Miracle is it. Mirah, it appears, has made the album we've been waiting for.
The author's endearing weirdness is still present; she's so utterly unconcerned with context that she kicks things off with a jazzy ballad whose chorus coos, "Come away with me." This time around, however, Mirah's wilder impulses miraculously defer to songcraft first-- there's not a meandering note on the album. Her trademark plinky ukulele draws polite curlicues throughout the record (and never receives its own track listing); her barking percussion loops co-exist with warm 60s-style drums.
"The Light" is an immediate highlight. A two-parter that unfolds like a power ballad in reverse, its first 90 seconds rock assuredly with a fantastically winding vocal line, while the second half slows to a serene coffeehouse strum. "We're Both So Sorry" is also quick to stand out-- of all C'mon Miracle's 11 tracks, it comes closest to matching the bizarre grandeur of "Cold Cold Water". Unidentifiable instruments (is that an autoharp? harmonium? horns?) float in and out of its mix, just before a nasty synth pulse takes over halfway through. And at song's end, Mirah's fragile vocal enters just in time to keep it all from collapsing in a heap: "I'm sorry about so much, baby, but I know you understand."
Straightforwardness does occasionally hinder Mirah in the lyric department. "Jerusalem" squanders one of the album's best melodies on "lessons we should learn from all the fighting in the days of old" and the admonishing chorus of, "So, now, Jerusalem, you know that it's not right." Thankfully, the singer's sense of humor reappears just in time, in the album's gentle final third. Mirah loves a fun shuffle (witness Black Mountain Music Project's "Oh! September" and the French-folk pastiche of "Light the Match", off Advisory Committee), and here, "The Dogs of Buenos Aires" and the tango closer "Exactly Where We're From" lighten the proceedings a bit. The album winds down quietly, almost apologetically, as if seized by second thoughts about its own catchiness. But these songs need no apology-- C'mon Miracle is not a crass bid for popularity, just an organic shift towards pop idiom. I hope that Mirah herself doesn't view it as a compromise or a concession; from here, it just looks like growing up.
-Michael Idov, May 13th, 2004
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