Like a swatch cut from a cloth left behind by Nick Drake or the Fairport Convention, Mia Doi Todd’s sublime new album is that inevitable breeze blown in from the underappreciated British folk scene of the 70’s. There is a dark intensity that flows over the ten songs, and on the 10 minute epic opener “River of Life” Todd’s shimmering voice, think a darker Sandy Denny, sails patiently towards some kind of peaceful oasis hidden behind an uncanny “Pink Moon” era guitar shadow. This record is so eerily reminiscent that it is astounding to imagine it being written today.
Like the original brit-folk music that took a Volkswagen commercial twenty-five years later to revive, Todd’s art is so subtle and spare that it will hard for this to appear on today’s music radar directed by myspace and iTunes compasses. But the orchestral, often Baroque, intonations of “Gea” represents what I hope will be a rival in musical songwriting all but abandoned for electronic beats and studio bells and whistles.
