Spin.com's Signal: Music Byte

Mira
"Real"
...from Mira

reviewed byTania Biswas (tania@quentincrisp.com)

There are certain moods to which different songs and bands adapt in each individual's mind. Or maybe it seems like that for those of us who are pseudo-intellectual to a fault. Still, sometimes it is the listener's mood that makes a song; you may hear a song that's good but not be able to distinguish it from others in its genre. For example, unless you listen carefully, most songs in the gothic, techno, shoegaze categories may all sound alike in the long run, whether it be due to the songs themselves or the genres' stereotypes. Yet there are times when, you may hear that indistinguishably good song in a particular mood, upon which occasion, you become hypersensitive to the way the song snakes around you and tightens its hold. It's like both you and the track having x-ray vision; because it is so perfectly attuned to the way you feel, you hear the subtle minefields of emotion that exist upon the present soundscape.

Such is where the extraordinariness of Tallahassee's Mira lies. The comparisons to The Cranberries are rather unmistakable at first listen and influences that range from Slowdive and The Cocteau Twins to early Cardigans (minus the kitsch) span the entire album. You can throw Mira's derivations left and right if you want, but then that would be missing the point. The band's eponymous debut is like cyanide; the initial strains of the album may leave the impression of well-intentioned, harmless, ethereal dabbling, not unlike the taste of almonds. But savor the record and it brings on an insidious, poisonous falling into guitar-wound songs washed with vocalist Regina Sosinski's soaring-into-the-depths soprano. "Real" inches forward with Sosinki's ominous pondering and a poignant guitar melody before exploding into erratic, dark bursts of percussion-backed chorus. Being hypnotically held down by the guitar and Cure-esque drumming of this song, you struggle between the bonds of the song (and your own emotions) around your wrists and the vocal angelics that call you up into the distance. You fight, you struggle, and you always willingly lose to the totality of the song and the moods it either creates or helps to further. Someone once told me, "It's not just about...songs." But sometimes, especially in the case of Mira, it is.