A deliciously bearable lightness of being defines Anna Mieke’s debut album. It’s a strikingly confident collection on 10 songs, full of blue sky thinking and wide open horizons.
Mieke, though Wicklow-born, is a worldly artist: her wide travels (from eastern Europe to New Zealand) are embedded in the molecules of her music, so that she sounds like nobody else and bereft of geographical ties.
Her album single, Creatures, is a standout track in a collection that’s devoid of a weak song: lithe and fluid, it speaks of that childhood vulnerability that silently infiltrates and colours our adult selves with both intuition and tenderness, anchored by Mieke’s own piano and cello, and Matthew Jacobson’s whispering percussion.
If anchor points are helpful (and often they aren't), then occasional echoes of Stina Nordenstam sound in the untrammelled style of Mieke's singing. But this is an artist who's unequivocally following her own path, as comfortable in the stark opening chords of Mountain song as she is in the deeply atmospheric, cinematic and reflective If.
Idle Mind is a slow burner (in the very best sense) that promises many fresh revelations with each return visit. A deliriously renewable energy source.
