Mirel Wagner
“The air dries out when you listen to Mirel Wagner. Her sparse guitar strums are like a warm wind carrying particles of sand, ossifying whatever it comes into contact with; the voice, one that feels from another time, buried for centuries, is so intimate it suffocates. Not just the dry, informal delivery but also the subject matter.
Suicide, death, necrophilia… just look at the disturbing honesty in ‘No Death’, a song from Wagner’s 2011 debut Mirel Wagner: ‘I move my hips/In her I am home/I’ll keep on loving/Till the marrow dries from her bones/No death/Can tear us apart.’ This is music that will make you flinch and reach for your throat as if something is stopping you from breathing, physical music as much as it is emotional.
Still in her early twenties, this young Finnish musician feels just ever so slightly out of time. Her style of jazz, folk and blues is drawn from the early 20th century; her self-titled debut wasn’t constructed from much other than her voice and guitar, very much a self-contained record with a mood that never wavers – and little has changed on album number two, When the Cellar Children See the Light of Day [...]” – Andrew Hannah, for The Line of Best Fit, Aug. 2014
“...sparse, convincingly gothic, gender-flipping tales of the macabre...” (Mojo, ****)
“...stark, poetic, with an echo of danger...” (Uncut, ****)
“...Mirel Wagner possesses a curious physicality both in her lyrical conjurings and in the confident agility of her guitar playing, which together sound distinctive, specific, and personal even when considered against the decades of acoustic folk music that has come before...” (Pitchfork)
Organisation: City of Women; In collaboration with: Menza Pri Koritu – AKC Metelkova
Price: 10 €, 7 € (students, unemployed, pensioners, self-employed in culture, disabled).
