Mi and L'au
Mi and L'au
(Young God Records)
You don’t know Mi and L’au, but
you know a couple like them: beautiful, blissfully in love, and,
well, sometimes a bit of a drag. They’re so into each other,
so deeply connected and complete in themselves, that being around
them feels vaguely creepy, as if you’re interrupting their
foreplay. Although it makes you feel like a jerk to begrudge them
their perfect-couple contentment, begrudge them you must:
Don’t they get sick of staring at each other’s flawless
faces?
Mi and L’au are a Finnish ex-model and
a French composer/multiinstrumentalist, respectively, who fell in
love in Paris (but of course — such people never hook up in
Des Moines). When not discovering new and fascinating things about
each other, they found the time to befriend freak-folk avatar
Devendra Banhart, who dedicated Oh Me
Oh My’s “A Gentle
Soul” to them. Then the pair retreated to a cabin in rural
Finland, where, between sessions of what was no doubt mutually
satisfying and respectful lovemaking, they wrote these 14 spare,
gentle, steadfastly pretty songs. Although their debut features
guest turns and overdubs by Banhart, Angels of Light, and others,
it sounds very much like a couple’s effort, so intimate that
it might as well be in a secret language. Mi sings in a soft, plain
semimonotone, as if she’s trying to console a colicky baby
while the rest of the family sleeps in the next room; L’au
decorates her pristine whisper with the barest instrumentation:
some delicate acoustic-guitar arpeggios, a spectral synth line, a
touch of piano, a cello or two, the occasional ambient fillip. The
sound is austere and dreamy, the aural equivalent of the aurora
borealis. The silence that surrounds almost every phrase functions
as an instrument in its own right; like a skylight in a tiny
bedroom, it suggests just enough distance and space to stave off
cabin fever.
Although the welcome-to-our-womb vibe can grate
at times, as on L’au’s ode to his unborn child
(“There’s a Word in Your Belly”) and Mi’s naked
hymn to spousal nakedness (“Nude”), the hushed elegance of
the orchestration and the transparent simplicity of the songs are
irresistible. To loveless, misanthropic ears, the CD might sound like a
Volkswagen Touareg ad waiting to happen, the 100 percent-organic fruit
of 21st-century bobo nesting, but that’s just the bitterness
talking. Sometimes, as long as you don’t stick around for the pet
names and furtive caresses, it’s comforting to be in the company
of people who care about each other so deeply that they can’t
help but assume you’ll care, too.
Jana Hunter
Blank Unstaring Heirs of Doom
(Gnomonsong)
Jana Hunter is the first artist to release an
album on Gnomonsong, the new label founded by Devendra Banhart and
Vetiver’s Andy Cabic. If Blank
Unstaring Heirs of Doom, the eccentric
Texan’s solo debut, is any indication, Gnomonsong is poised
to let its freak-folk flag fly high. Recorded mostly on two- and
four-tracks over the course of a decade, the 13 songs have the
quality of field recordings, their lo-fi limitations (mic
distortion, tape hiss, random flubs and fumbles) conferring a kind
of grubby authenticity on what is, at its core, a rather
intellectual enterprise. Like the bastard daughter of Chan Marshall
and Tom Waits, Hunter splits the difference between heart and head,
balancing oddball mantras (“Laughing and crying are the same
thing/Tearing at something with claws you can’t see”)
with artless confessionals (“I don’t feel safe/When
I’m feeling down”). Weird though they might be,
Hunter’s songs never seem self-conscious or precious, and her
bluesy murmur makes even her most obscure lines radiant with
meaning.
