Feature of the Month: Mirel Wagner

on 2011-09-14

...it was like the world stood completely still for 3 minutes and 10 seconds when I heard this song and saw this video for the first time. So beautiful, so fragile and yet so strong. There’s some kind of dark, lullaby-like atmosphere in this music, with a simple arrangement that works perfectly. Everything seems to be stripped down to it’s core. Hauntingly beatiful...
- Eardrums Music

...the antithesis of how a young woman in her early twenties should sound. It has those world-weary and resigned tones that make Billie Holiday and Leonard Cohen so appealing. It sounds like the truth....
- Jean Ramsay/Rumba

Mirel Wagner is a classic, old school singer-songwriter, right down to the brass tacks of her ascendance as a musician. Her first artistic love is painting, but as a teen she decided to give guitar a try, inspired by Mississippi John Hurt, Hope Sandoval and a host of singer-songwriters in between.

Mirel started going to open mics in Helsinki, like probably millions before her all over the world, honing her craft with a more single-minded purpose than most. As a result she sprang upon the world seemingly fully formed out of nowhere with her eponymous debut album.

Now, coffee shops might make you think: “ah, 60s folkie-style!” You’d be wrong. Wagner draws from an older and darker well, one that echoes with the voices of early-20th century bluesmen. The songs are bare, stripped to the bone, and the emotional charge is extreme.

Wagner’s concerts are an intense experience, and getting more so as her experience grows. She’s equally at home picking on her guitar and at the scabs of your deepest fears in the corner of a dive bar or opening for a death metal band.

 

Mirel Wagner - No Death from Aki Roukala on Vimeo.



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