Holly Miranda Premieres Stunning "All I Want Is To Be Your Girl" Video
On a
trip intended to jumpstart the creative process for new material, Holly
Miranda reflects, “I had a dream that I was going to rent a house in
Joshua Tree and go write by myself for a month. I’d never been there
before, but I woke up the next day and booked the first house I found
and left a few days later. It was about getting away from the chatter of
Los Angeles and reconnecting with myself and nature. I had a bit of
writer’s block after the last record, I wasn’t having fun anymore and I
really needed to get back the core of why I started making music 17
years ago.” she says.
Whatever
it was Miranda needed from her time in desert, she seems to have found
it. On her self-titled sophomore release Miranda nods at her
singer-songwriter roots but also pushes herself in new directions. She
co-produced the album with Florent Barbier, and tracks like “Desert
Call” and “Everlasting,” show off straightforward songwriting, soulful
delivery and a lighters-in-the-air orchestration that places Miranda
alongside the pantheon of songwriters who can make heartache sound
beautiful. After half of her life spent on stage or in a recording
studio—with her former rock band The Jealous Girlfriends and more
recently as a solo artist— Miranda is still experimenting and diving for
deeper truths.
“This
is the most honest thing I’ve ever made; it’s very raw and is a
contrast to what I’ve done in the past,” she says. After writing in
Joshua Tree, she headed to Brooklyn, New York in the winter of 2012 to
record most of the album, enlisting the help of bandmates Timmy Mislock,
Maria Eisen and David Jack Daniels, while taking turns herself on
piano, drums, guitar and bass. “There’s a Motown vibe to some of the
songs” she notes of the recordings. “I wanted it to feel like the band
was playing the songs live. There’s also a few that are more electronic
and ethereal,” like the song “Come On.” She recorded that track in Los
Angeles with David Andrew Sitek, producer of her 2010 release The
Magicians Private Library.
Outside of recording, Miranda’s kept
plenty busy. She recently toured the globe playing guitar for Karen O in
support of her solo debut Crush Songs, she toured Spain for the annual
Voces Femininas festival and is currently working on a graphic novel
with Portland based artist Catherine Lazar Odell.
“I
can’t remember a time I wasn’t singing. When I was little my older
sisters used to make me lay on the floorboard of the car if I was going
to sing, because my voice was so loud they said it felt like it was
‘inside of their heads.’ I’ll never stop making music. It’s the best
therapy I’ve found.”
Listening to her new record, one certainly hopes she never stops.
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