A "Share this Place" (K Records) Sounds like: For people who love Beirut and insects equally.
If beetles enjoyed music, if they liked to listen to some tunes while bugging around the sidewalk or kitchen counter, this album would be in top rotation on their little beetlePod. Commissioned by the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art and the Seattle International Children's Festival, solo artist Mirah and members of the Seattle-based ensemble Spectratone International have joined forces to create a cycle of songs about insects. It is perhaps the most engrossing group of tunes dedicated to our tiny friends ever amassed.
Mirah, whose full name is Mirah Yom Tov Zeitlyn, has been recording solo albums since 1997 with such notable releases as 2001's delightful "Advisory Committee" and 2004's "C'mon Miracle," both for Olympia, Washington's K Records. Prior to her solo work, Mirah worked with the band Microphones.
Spectratone International is a four-piece ensemble out of the northwest U.S., featuring accordion, cello, percussion and the Middle Eastern proto guitar instrument, the oud. Two members of Spectratone, cellist Lori Goldston and accordion player Kyle Hanson, co-wrote the album with Mirah, but the whole crew, including percussionist Jane Hall, and oud player Kane Mathis, join the party, filling the aural atmosphere with milky, gypsy-tinged textures.
The album was premiered in May 2007 as part of the Seattle International Children's Festival, along with a series of stop-motion videos by artist Britta Johnson. Influences on the themes include Kafka's "Metamorphosis," Czech author Karol Capek's "The Insect Play" and late-19th century entomologist J. Henri Fabre, according to Lori Goldston's Web site.
Mirah employed Goldston and Hanson, then under the name the Black Cat Orchestra, back in 2004 for the album "To All We Stretch the Open Arm." The chemistry can be easily felt on "Share this Place." The interplay between Mirah's confident yet controlled vocals and the instrumentation and arranging creates a symbiotic relationship of which a hive of bees or hill of ants would be jealous.
Mirah's old musical confederate Phil Elverum, main songwriter and producer of the Microphones, joins the project to dedicate his production skill. Bringing the art of noise, which was such a staple of Microphones' music, to this more controlled project, Elverum creates fuzzy, overdriven yet tasteful songs with his unique and often unorthodox technique.
One standout track is "Community," which opens the album with a flourish of bass chords, and Mirah's multitracked vocals. The song introduces the concept of the insects working together, suggesting, as the album as a whole does, that we humans can learn something from bugs.
