Concept albums are by nature few and far between. Everyone knows Pink Floyd’s The Wall, and my favourite was always Dredg’s El Cielo but it’s always been a noble risk considering how many artists try and fail.
Somehow using the full breadth of an album’s length, and the way it can shift in mood between songs (by the very way tracks tend to proceed), and then the foresight to thread each song together - this has always been to my taste, and I imagine that goes for anyone without a severe attentional disorder.
Mirah’s latest Share This Place: Stories and Observations (surprise, surprise), is just such an album, and what’s that? It will even assault its audience on a variety of sensory levels. Which is to say, it’s not just a musical adventure: it comes packaged and prepared to draw you into a full multi-media experience, with the short film Credo Cigalia (see it here) bundled alongside the album.
While the video is a bit meek, leaning more on the “Let’s get kids excited about BUGS!” mentality, the album is far from that. Share This Place is, on a large scale, a biological observation piece written in memory of Jean Henri Fabre. Jean Henri was an early-20th-century entomologist who somehow managed to synthesize biology with poetry and a love for life, especially the small and seemingly insignificant kind.
Mirah manages to capture Mr. Fabre’s essence by peering up at our gigantic world through the lens of a love-sick fly, a proud lightning-bug, a clever dung beetle… each tale such as these is delivered in the classic form of monologue, and grounded in such biological and psychological ideas as instinct, drive, passion and consciousness while remaining true to poetic form and aesthetic. Toss that with some quirky french instrumentals from the Spectratone International accompaniment and you’ve got both a work of art and a work riddled with deep ins-and-outs (ala arthropods!).
Share This Place is due for release August 7th from K Records. Mirah is also on tour with one of two stops North of the border you may just want to attend:
August 12th in Montreal @ La Sala Rossa
August 13th in Toronto @ Lee’s Palace
mp3:
My Prize
Love Song of the Fly
Godspeed You! But Don’t Forget The Small Fry.
Recent Retaliations.