Mirah (US singer, songwriter & musician)

Mirah (born Mirah Yom Tov Zeitlyn) (born September 17, 1974) is an American musician and songwriter based in Brooklyn, New York. After getting her start in the music scene of Olympia, Washington, in the late 1990s, she released a number of well-received solo albums on K Records, including You Think It's Like This but Really It's Like This (2000) and Advisory Committee (2002). Her 2009 album (a)spera peaked on the Billboard Top Heatseekers chart at No. 46, while her 2011 collaborative album Thao + Mirah peaked at No. 7. She has released eleven full-length solo and collaborative recordings, numerous EP's and 7" vinyl records, and has contributed tracks to a wide variety of compilations. Mirah has collaborated with artists such as Phil Elverum of The Microphones, Tune-Yards, Susie Ibarra, Jherek Bischoff and Thao Nguyen. Her style encompasses indie pop, acoustic, and experimental pop. According to The Rumpus in 2011, "Mirah's early records...are DIY mini-masterpieces that express a punk sensibility through broken drum machines, reverb-drenched guitars and ukulele. Her more recent albums...are mature, complex and immaculately-produced." On July 31, 2020, Mirah released a 20 Year Anniversary Reissue of her germinal album, You Think It's Like This But Really It's Like This via Double Double Whammy. The double LP reissue includes a remastered version of the record as well as a tribute to the album that features covers by Mount Eerie, Half Waif, Hand Habits, Palehound, Shamir, Sad13 (Sadie Dupuis), Allison Crutchfield (of Swearin') and more. The Fader premiered the reissue record and wrote, "the LP established Mirah as one of the smartest and most exciting young artists in America. It also went on to inspire a new generation of indie musicians, drawn in by Mirah’s deft and introspective songwriting..." Mirah Yom Tov Zeitlyn was born on September 17, 1974, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the youngest of three children. Her mother is a painter and massage therapist and together with her father ran a small natural foods bakery throughout Mirah's childhood and adolescence. Her father worked delivering Rolling Stone magazine for several years in the late 1970s. Her parents raised the family on macrobiotic foods. Her father was an avid music lover with a large record collection and Mirah developed an early interest in music. As a child, she listened heavily to Motown, 1960s R&B, soul music, and folk music. Mirah's family moved a number of times between 1974 and 1979, including a stint on a hippie commune near Spencer, West Virginia and several years in a rural Pennsylvania farmhouse adjacent to the farm owned by her extended family. The family moved to Bala Cynwyd, a suburb of Philadelphia, in 1979. Her mother's family identifies as Protestant and her father is Jewish. Mirah was raised observing Shabbat and identifies as Jewish. Mirah took part in a number of anti-nuclear walks during her middle school and high school years, including a 6-week stretch of the 9-month cross country Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament in 1986 when she was 12. In middle school she developed a love of 1980s pop music and female artists such as Sinéad O'Connor and Cyndi Lauper. By the time she got to college, her music collection had expanded to include a diverse range of artists (Huggy Bear, Cat Stevens, The Pretenders, Nina Simone, etc.). After graduating high school early at 16, Mirah spent a year traveling before moving to Olympia, Washington, in 1992 to attend the Evergreen State College. She taught herself guitar and wrote her first song as an assignment for class. While in college she worked at a collectively run vegetarian campus café with Kimya Dawson, who later became her label-mate at K Records.[citation needed] She was a member of the short-lived all-female Olympia band The Drivers with Molly Burgdorf and Sarah Reed. For a short stint she sang with a swing band and occasionally contributed vocals to an early incarnation of Old Time Relijun. She was briefly the drummer for The Chosen, a Jewish heavy metal duo. In 1996 she began developing her own musical style, composing lo-fi indie pop with vocals and acoustic guitar. Her early style drew comparisons to Liz Phair, and she soon began performing around Olympia under the one-name moniker Mirah. Mirah was involved with a number of "secret cafes" in Olympia, including The Red Horse Cafe which she and her roommate Ariana Jacob ran out of their one bedroom apartment. The Red Horse Cafe served a different menu every Sunday for a year and a half in 1998/1999. The Red Horse Cafe appears in the documentary short 9 Weeks. She was also involved with several large scale theatrical productions including The Transfused, a 2000 rock opera written by Nomy Lamm and The Need. Though surrounded by the local riot grrrl movement of the 1990s, Mirah didn't explicitly associate herself with the genre. After graduating from the Evergreen State College in 1996, she began experimenting on her 4-track recorder with sounds that would be used on her debut album. Her first EP Storageland was released on Yoyo Recordings in 1997 and received a positive review in Allmusic. The 6 song one sided 12" featured an etching on the B side by artist Nikki McClure. According to Laura Leebove in Venus Zine, listeners were "drawn to the unpolished sound...with its sometimes muffled vocals, raw guitars, and background-noise cracklings." In 1999 she self-released a second EP titled Parts of Human Desire. The bulk of her first records were recorded at the Dub Narcotic studio space in Olympia Washington. Olympia musician Phil Elverum soon invited her to contribute guitar and vocals to his psychedelic pop group The Microphones, and she performs on many Microphones recordings including Don't Wake Me Up (1999) and Window (2000). She later toured extensively with The Microphones across the US and Canada. According to The Rumpus, Mirah "was part of the K Records renaissance [of the late '90s] along with bands like The Microphones, The Blow and Old Time Relijun – all highly distinct, idiosyncratic groups with Calvin Johnson's influence perhaps manifesting in the form of a primitivist or intentionally naïve approach." You Think It's Like This but Really It's Like This (2000) Mirah joined the Olympia-based label K Records in 1999. Her full-length debut and first album on the label, You Think It's Like This but Really It's Like This, was released on June 6, 2000. Produced by Mirah and Phil Elverum, it scored 4/5 stars from AllMusic, who called it "a masterpiece of lo-fi beauty" and praised "Mirah's wistful voice and intimately personal lyrics." Small Sale EP (2001) Small Sale EP is a 2001 album by Mirah released on Modern Radio Records. Songs were recorded from 1999 to 2001 at Mirah's house and the recording studio Dub Narcotic, all while Mirah was still touring for her previous album. It was positively received by Allmusic, who compared Mirah's vocals to Lucinda Williams and called her voice "intoxicatingly endearing, as are the electronic beats and textures she uses as deftly as she does a ukulele or acoustic guitar." Advisory Committee (2002) Mirah's second full-length album was recorded over a one-year period, starting on September 17, 2000, and ending on July 4, 2001, and was produced by both Mirah and Phil Elverum. Advisory Committee was released on K Records on March 19, 2002, and was well-received, earning an Allmusic score of 4.5/5 and a Pitchfork Media score of 8.3/10, who praised the maturity of her voice and lyrics. Cold Cold Water EP (2002) Mirah's Cold Cold Water EP was released on March 19, 2002, on K Records. It received a positive review in Pitchfork, who praised the title track, stating "the song is deadly serious, dark, and full of the kind of not-so vague sexual innuendos we've come to expect from Mirah. Then, Phil Elverum's panoramic, Morricone-esque production technique explodes onto the soundstage." Pitchfork called the other three tracks