Cameron Mesirow, aka Glasser, had a show last night at Amoeba, a special release performance for her new album ‘Ring’ and her only live show in LA.
I had rapidly read a few reviews of her album beforehand, and they were all extremely positive, prizing her imaginative songs and comparing her to Bjork all over the place. I can see this last one, kind of, although the songs seemed coming from a more unique place.
The music is slow paced, hardly moving sometimes, with weird sounds, as if originating from some made-up mythological lost tribe or rainforest, it’s odd and repetitive like a druid circle dance, like a ring with no end or beginning.
Cameron started by saying they would be doing a special performance, different from what they had done before.
She was only performing with one guitarist and his ‘magic’ guitar as she called it, a guitar-synthesizer which was producing any kind of sounds, and connected to several loop recorders. The diverse synthesized loops were then overlapped and continuously played till the end of the song. It sounded like a flute at time, like a harsh and violent drumbeat, like a xylophone, like an organ keyboard or even a sax.
The whole thing was surprising and interesting to watch but I have never really entered into the music, may be it was the minimalist aspect of some songs, or the lamenting voice, beautiful nevertheless, but I found it hard to be truly emotionally involved.
It may also be the exoticism of the music which could sound at times like some Asian-inspired pentatonic scale, as if the note range was limited and contained between some limits imposed by some mysterious aesthetic
Cameron Mesirow’s voice, always clear and pleasant, was soothing, fragile although assured, a little like the personality she was presenting on stage. She seems very shy and nervous between songs, but confident when singing.
Among others, she sang ‘T’ and ‘Clamour’, a song, she said, they would never thought possible to perform live.
Her last song was a cover of the popular ‘I Only Have Eyes for You’, bared to the essential and so slowed down you could count the seconds between the notes.
She had asked for no video and no pictures, something rare at Amoeba, so I did not take any, not wanting to misbehave in a place I frequent so much. I don’t know, I found the whole thing a little eccentric and capricious, but may be it is because she is very timid? I have read somewhere she had sleep paralysis and night terrors as a child, and may be this is enough to explain a lot of her uneasiness in public. But she should let it go, because her fluid electronic-folk music are dreams you have while being wide awake.