With lo-fi legend Calvin “Beat Happening” Johnson behind the board, it’s almost a given that brilliance will pour forth from an album. Mirah, K Records’ resident neo-folk princess, certainly provides that brilliance on this EP, despite only featuring three songs.

Much like labelmate Phil “Microphones” Elvrum, Mirah proves curiously adept at making even the simplest songs seem epic. “Cold Cold Water (Album Version)” is the tongue-and-cheek story of a cowgirl that begins with her acoustic guitar and gentle vocals, but suddenly becomes a full-blown orchestral number (courtesy of the aforementioned Elvrum, who produced the song). The song doesn’t lose its power three songs later, when a scaled-down version featuring only guitar and vocals leads into a bizarre collection of excerpted portions of the orchestral parts of the “Album Version.”

The real stand-out song, however, is “Make It Hot,” a quiet, erotically abstract tune which finds Mirah casually arpeggiating her guitar and singing huskily, imploring the listener to “take me over and over and over.” While the song isn’t the most lyrically complex of songs, it is so different from the explosive, operatic first track and the more aggressive “Apples In the Trees” that the sudden intimacy of Mirah’s voice, instrumentation, and lyrics nearly succeed in fulfilling the promise of the title on more than one level.

The only frustrating part of the album is its brevity; because of the emotional range the EP shows, only including three original songs and an alternate version of one of the songs cheats the listener out of what should be an amazing full-length album. On the other hand, the tight-knit K Records community is known for its eccentricity as well as its prolific output, so it stands to reason that another glimpse into Mirah’s creative output may be right around the corner.

– Darryl Moton

Rainer Maria guitarist Kyle Fischer’s latest album isn’t exactly a “solo” project (bandmate Caithlin De Marrais appears on four of the album’s eleven tracks), but is far enough removed from the band’s normal paradigm to warrant a separate release.

Anyone worth their salt knows the “emo” post-punk subgenre has become so vapidly poppy that the emotional honesty and expressiveness that gives it its name is all but gone. Amidst the legions of bands that are, essentially, pop-punk acts desperately trying to amalgamate Weezer-esque pop rock with Diary-era Sunny Day Real Estate, Fischer’s sense of subtlety and sensitivity will probably fall off the “emo” map.

It’s a shame, too, because “Open Ground” is nothing short of a masterpiece, combining Fischer’s amazing gift for guitar -playing with sensitive and intelligent lyrics RM fans have come to expect. From the album’s opening cut, “Headphones,” (a clever tribute to record shops whose hidden gems provide hours of relief from the everyday world), to the tongue-in-cheek closer “Kissing Cabernet,” Fischer establishes a quiet, somber mood driven more by his singing than his gorgeous arrangements. Indeed, so compelling is Fischer’s flawed, everyman (read: bad) singing voice that he can warble lines like “an evening’s record listening’s like a divine communiqu‚” and somehow sound completely unpretentious.

Wisely, Fischer does not allow his voice to be the only one heard on the album, turning over the microphone to De Marrais for, among other songs, an ambitious cover of Otis Redding’s “Just One More Day” (ironically, the album’s highlight). Even when he isn’t singing, however, his guitar speaks volumes for him, floating between tender acoustic whispers and screaming, Pixies-esque atmospheric ambience. In a genre of overstated emotions and redundant bombast, Fischer softly steps forward and makes a distinct impression.

– Darryl Moton

For the uninitiated, Bob Mould stands out as one of the most influential musicians in alternative rock music. In the 80s, Mould fronted the post-punk outfit Husker Du; when they broke up in 1988, he recorded a few solo albums until forming Sugar in 1992. When Sugar disbanded in ’95, Mould went solo once more, at times lending his services to other performers (that’s his guitar solo you hear at the end of the film “Hedwig and the Angry Inch”).

“Modulate,” Mould’s first album in four years, brings a synth-pop sound that may prove jarring to fans of Husker Du – and well it should, because Mould’s clever lyrics and melodies are all but smothered by electronic noise, dulling the impact of what could have been a brilliant album.

Of course, the album isn’t a total loss; on the more guitar-driven tracks (particularly the moody “The Receipt”) Mould discards the blips and bleeps for the most part and turns the volume up. Fortunately, however, on all the songs, Mould’s lyrics remain evocative and creative (“And then I’m stuck in a room/ The Sex Pistols began to play/ It was terribly lame in a predictable way,” he sings on “Slay/Sway”) and, although the noise is a bit distracting, his keyboard work certainly seems interesting and original. Still, “Modulate” generally disappoints, seemingly the first forgivable miscue in Mould’s illustrious career.

– Darryl Moton