Rolling down a lonely desert highway. Almost out of gas, and the vultures are noticing. Night begins to haunt, and with it comes coldness.
“Why not try singing into the steering wheel instead of pressing the gas pedal?”
“Seriously? Okay...”
“Hey - it’s working! There’s the next station up ahead.”
On Miwa Gemini’s CD This Is How I Found You, the sparse, dreamy soundscapes simultaneously elicit the desert and the oasis. The starkness of it all is almost unbearable at times, but the airy delicateness of Miwa’s voice seems to reliably rise through the dusty surface like some North Star in a diminishing sky. Instrumentally, less is proven to be more as this collection rocks back and forth from lullaby to foot-tapper within a consistently minimalist palette, with surprises limited to the understated. And how effective and catchy it can be - “Crazy Over You” keeps rollin’ like a tumbleweed through my brain. Throughout the disc, guitars of both dirt and clouds weave around a skeletal rhythm section, with the occasional piano or harp chiming in nicely. This collection is a gentle wind.

By Sean Luciw
Nov 1, 2007