Like most worthwhile artists, the
Los Angeles-based folk singer Mia Doi Todd is a mess of
contradictions. This slipperiness, this ability to be
simultaneously one thing and its opposite, makes listening to her
interesting, but it makes describing her difficult. How can a
singer sound both intimate and declamatory, both pretentious and
plainspoken? Where does someone with such regal phrasing (not to
mention a Yale degree) get off doing folk music anyway?
Aren’t folk singers supposed to muck around in the dirt with
the downtrodden, write chantable anthems for the proletariat? When
did it become acceptable to study avant-garde dance in Japan (as
Todd did for most of 1998) or refer to oneself (as Todd does on her
Web site) as “a bard, a folksinger, in the traditions of
William Blake, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, Nico, Caetano Veloso,
Sinead O’Connor”?
Bob Dylan answered these questions about 40
years ago, and though there are probably still a few crusty old
acoustofascists who never forgave him for dumping Hattie Carroll in
favor of Arthur Rimbaud, most of us no longer expect our folk
singers to be regular folks — regular folks, after all, like
George W. Bush and NASCAR and Toby Keith, not ambiguous,
airy-fairy, liberal-elite folk music that doesn’t even rhyme
most of the time. Maybe it’s not Todd who contradicts herself
but the genre itself. The working-class heroes feel reassured and
vindicated by the contrived twang of a Kennebunkport fraud while
Woody Guthrie (that tree-hugging commie!) rolls in his lonesome
grave. It’s hard to blame the folk singers for turning
inward, especially these days, when outward is so dispiriting.
Calling Todd a folk singer makes sense if
you’re thinking not so much of Guthrie and Leadbelly but of
Sandy Denny and Nick Drake. In other words, she traffics in soft,
pretty enigmas, not rousing assertions, and her subjects are mostly domestic and
confessional. She has a strange and gorgeous voice, nimble and austere,
with the bright, woody resonance of an oboe; somehow it sounds deep
even when she’s trilling ever upward in a dog-whistle register
attempted by few singers not covering “Big Yellow Taxi.”
Her diction is precise and formal, her accent unplaceable. Sometimes
she emphasizes the wrong syllable to make the word fit the melody;
sometimes she makes up words (“neverendless,”
“compliances”) for the sake of rhythm and the occasional
rhyme. She plays acoustic guitar with delicacy and inventiveness, so
skillfully that you barely notice how cunningly it supports her voice.
On Manzanita, her fifth album, Todd is joined by several friends
and fellow Angelenos, from the Beachwood Sparks to the Brian
Jonestown Massacre, from Dead Meadow to Future Pigeon. The result
is surprisingly cohesive, especially given the fact that
Todd’s stylistic palette has never been more ambitious.
There’s “The Way,” the CD’s only political
song, in which backwards guitars and two basses commune all
Magickal-like with Todd’s dolorous pronouncements about junk
bonds and gas-guzzlers. Then there’s the flamenco-flavored
“Tongue-Tied,” its classical guitar and mandolin
peppered by handclaps. “Casa Nova,” the only track on
the CD that isn’t completely captivating, is kinda
rock-steady (as sung by the whitest of white girls, natch). With
its barely-there piano and mordant romanticism, “Muscle, Bone
& Blood” is a black-ice ballad worthy of Linda Thompson;
the sprightly tempo and chamber-orchestra gloss of “The Last
Night of Winter” evoke Burt Bacharach and Love. Although
songs about the moon have become almost unbearably trite,
especially when delivered by folky poetesses, no one could wish
Todd’s “Luna Lune” away, and hippie-dippy bongos
can’t spoil the grandeur of “My Room Is White.”
In Todd’s capable hands, these tired tropes are redeemed,
rendered new again.
This article appears in Mar 24-30, 2005.
