It is hard to imagine that other than the sunny melodies and
psychadelics that embody the standard “California
sound” there is a lesser-known style of music that just as
deservedly calls the Golden State its home.
Listen to electronic artist Dntel’s “Life is Full of
Possibilities” and within the second track, you will hear it
““ a woman hypnotically intoning “I love you,”
behind an abstract, ambient sea of noise, reflecting a foggy,
bittersweet sound. But the sound is not so much within the
instrumentation as in the emotions it evokes ““ a kind of
mesmerizing, dream-like consciousness.
The native Silverlake resident Dntel had employed fellow
hometown neighbor Mia Doi Todd to sing over that track, and the
result doesn’t recall the Beach Boys or Love, but the kind of
organic, alien, yet oddly familiar emotions you would expect from
Mum or Bjork.
The soft-spoken Todd, who performs at the Cooperage tonight at 7
p.m., speaks fondly of her home in Silverlake, where she drew
inspiration as a young artist.
“Even then it was one of the most ethnically diverse
neighborhoods in Los Angeles,” she said. “And from its
beginning it was sort of an artists’ enclave because it was
such an open-minded place to grow up. I’ve been surrounded by
art my whole life, so I think it was pretty natural for me to
become an artist and see beauty as a lifetime pursuit. “
Todd’s father is a sculptor, and her mother a Japanese
judge, who introduced her to traditional Japanese music. She sang
in choirs until she felt the need to find her own voice and write
her own songs. As a student at Yale, she started her career as an
acoustic singer-songwriter. She broke free from that mold with her
most recent album, “The Golden State.”
“In making it we decided to make it sort of a recap of my
work to date, and some of my old songs I think deserved a new
recording,” she said. “This (album) is the first one to
have orchestration. I knew I needed to get beyond my cocoon of solo
acoustic music, so that was a barrier that was knocked
down.”
Now Todd doesn’t think of herself as a traditional
singer-songwriter, and rightly so. Even though the label has its
merits and respectful lineage, singer-songwriters represent a sort
of simple, proletariat identity who value simplicity in music.
Todd’s music, however, has a particular emphasis on the
spiritual and abstract. It often takes several listening sessions
to absorb the odd melodies, rhythms and instrumentation.
“My way of thinking is that the words and music are
already out there, paired together and I just have to find
them,” she said. “So it’s sort of like
archaeology ““ I’m digging and then I find them, then I
brush them off and figure out what they are.”
Todd speaks of her songs being “conceived” at that
one moment when the words come together with the music. Indeed her
evocative lyrics seem impeccably crafted, along with any other
detail that accompanies them. Some may think she takes her music
too seriously, but it serves as a nice contrast to the false, but
ubiquitous, “fun in the sun” cliche that follows us as
consistently as the California weather.
“California was the frontier in that it wasn’t so
related to Europe, it was more open to (artistic)
influences,” Todd said. “In that way I do feel like a
member of this entourage of Californian musical history of the last
100 years, with an accumulation of the whole world coming here. It
is more a melting pot than other regions of the United States. All
these different things have come together to synthesize into
something new.”
Mia Doi Todd performs at the Cooperage tonight at 7 p.m.
Admission is free.