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MUSIC
AWARDS SHOW
THURSDAY JUNE 23 • 8pm
at The Morton Theatre
FEATURING:
« ABANDON THE
EARTH MISSION
LERA LUNN »
TIMMy TUMBLE
UBy KENDRICK •-
• KENOSHA KID
ATHENS VERTICAL
DANCE ACADEMY
AND MORE!
SEE NEXT WEEK'S FLAGPOLE FOR
CATEGORY FINALISTS & TICKET INFO
T he most New York's Miwa Gemini will say
about her stage name is that Gemini is
her astrological sign. She won't reveal
her actual name—but that's OK, because
she doesn't care to talk too much about her
self in her music.
Most of Miwa Gemini's songs are intricate,
guitar-based pieces riddled with twisted horns
and fleshed out with eerie minor-key strains. A
casual listen conjures images of some mysteri
ous chanteuse serenading a dark, back-alley
barroom, but in real life she's straightforward
and modest.
The complex chords in her songs show she's
quite adept in music theory—in fact, she's
classically trained, having studied piano since
her childhood in Japan. She deserves to be
a little cocky about her talent. But she isn't.
She even admits it took some time for her to
believe in her own ability to write music. She
originally moved to the Big Apple under the
guise of studying photography.
"I actually wanted to do music all along,
but I just didn't have the guts to really face
it," she says. "It's funny because I played a
lot of shows with other bands before I played
my first open-mic by myself, so I'd been
onstage and everything before, but never
as a main singer and not by myself. It was
the scariest thing I'd ever done. I remember
looking at the exit door from the stage and
thinking, 'Maybe if I just run they won't say
anything.'"
Still, she pushed through the show and
thrust her creativity into the limelight. Since
then, she has built a loose network of friends
who collaborate with her and help realize her
songs. "I have a full band of three or more
people sometimes," she says, "but for this
tour it's just me and Aaron [Burns], who plays
accordion, piano and glockenspiel."
From the chords to the song structures to
the unusual choice of instruments, her music
exudes adventurousness and confidence—a far
cry from the girl with stage fright at open-mic
night.
Gemini is just more comfortable speaking
through her music. Her vocals recall Bjork's
haunting timbre with a more direct delivery.
Then there's her guitar tone: warm and quiet
but assertive enough to string the whole pack
age together.
"Guitar is definitely my [primary] instru
ment, but having a classical background
definitely influences the way I write music
and the way I approach guitar, even though
I've never studied guitar; I'm self-taught," she
says. "I almost never use picks, and I feel like
that approach comes from the piano."
Lyrically, she focuses on the folk tradition
of storytelling. Though she doesn't listen to
much in the way of conventional folk music,
she does enjoy darker, "non-Disney" fairy tales
in the vein of the Brothers Grimm or Hans
Christian Andersen. She also names Tom Waits
as a chief lyrical influence, referring to him as
"hilarious."
"I like the classic fairy tales, you know, the
original ones that not always necessarily have
a happy ending," she says. "It's more strange
and beautiful."
Which brings us around to Grizzly Rose, the
mysterious woman Gemini fashioned for her
quasi-concept album, Fantastic Lies of Grizzly
Rose, which was released just a couple weeks
ago. She's cautious to call Grizzly Rose her
alter-ego, merely stating "it'd definitely be
cool to be her."
"The way I look at it, I was lucky enough
for her to appear. I didn't really create her,"
Gemini explains, adding to Rose's mystique.
"She just appeared and said, 'I want my story
to be known... you will do.'"
As the playfully gothic cover art (a la Tim
Burton) suggests, the music retains a quality
that's edgy yet buoyant, unsettling yet never
bleak—a quality that fits Gemini's description
of Grizzly Rose pretty damn well.
John Barrett
( ^
WHO: Miwa Gemini,
Etienne de Rocher. Kara Kildare,
Griffin and the True Believer
WHERE: Flicker Theatre & Bar
WHEN: Thursday, June 9,8:30 p.m.
HOW MUCH: $5
V /
14 FLAGPOLE.COM JUNE 8,2011