Mirel Wagner

The great Townes Van Zandt once said there are two kinds of music: "The Blues and Zip-a-dee-doo-dah." According to this, the debut of Mirel Wagner falls into the blues category. "Songwriting can hardly be more minimalistic, no-frills, more strict as Mirel Wagner's sparse music," wrote German Spex magazine, quite right.

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INFO

Mirel Wagner was born in Ethiopia, and grew up in peaceful conditions in Espoo, Finland. The family name leads back to a German great-grandfather. At age 7 she was given violin lessons, at 13 she switched to guitar and at 16 she wrote her first songs ("To The Bone", the album opener, is one of those early tunes) After a while she dared to join open mic events in Helsinki. People were surprised, interested and seemed to like it.
Jean Ramsay, an American music journalist living in Finland, came across her at one of these sessions. He was particularly convinced of her talent, raved about her in an early article and recommended her to others. So, without producing a demo and contacting record labels, she found herself sitting in a real recording studio. Aki Roukala, a photographer and friend of Ramsay offered to finance these recordings and to take care that the tapes secured a release. Over two days she recorded 12 songs straight. 9 of them can be found on her debut, which was first released in Finland in spring 2011, and in Europe Nov. '11 via our own 22-Pistepirkko label Bone Voyage Recordings (and a bit later, March '12, even in North America through a license to Friendly Fire Recordings). Whether in Finland, France, Germany, UK, or in the US, journalists who've been listening a bit closer are full of praise for this young, slightly different talent, who has seemingly appeared out of the blue with her otherworldly gloomy folk..
There's not much you can hear on this debut. It's an "empty" record - in the best sense:
A stoically picked, almost trance-inducing acoustic guitar, a voice you wouldn't expect to hear from a 23 year old and songs, which mostly avoid classical (folk) song structure (rather "lonely prayers in expressionistic language" Spex). Everything is stripped to the bone and maintains a beautiful, strangely fragile tension, even more so during her live performances. "The singer is majestic in her sobriety." a French critic wrote. "She will literally knock you down with her candour and tenderness, captivating with her melodic charisma, wonderful and quiet. ... Music from another time, fabulous and elusive .. "
Equally consistent, as the ghostly mood floats through her album, her lyrics deal with really dark themes ... necromancy, love, death and the devil. These are not happy songs. But Mirel avoids any overly theatric gestures and instead imbues her songs with a subtle lyrical grace, even when the songs are about dead lovers and equally dark topics. “Stark and poetic, with an echo of danger” wrote Uncut (UK) in their 4star review. Also 4/5 from Mojo (UK), who described her songs as “sparse, convincingly gothic, gender-flipping tales of the macabre” ,
All of which begs the question: how can a young woman sound so sad? In an interview with the German Rolling Stone, Mirel said: "I think it's a bit lazy to say that I make sad music. Of course you might say the lyrics are bizarre or dark. But for me, the songs are first and foremost filled with desire. And there's this hope in them that love overcomes everything. What I find sad is the soulless music that is on the radio most of the time, music that is simply product. If there is no life in it... is this not much sadder than a melancholic song?"

The response to Mirel Wagner debut draw the attention from Sub Pop Records, and her sophomore album was licensed and released world wide through the legendary Seattle based label. Entitled "When The Cellar Children See The Light Of Day" has been recorded in winter 2013/14 in Hailuoto, an island in Northern Finland and released world-wide in August 2014. In Finland it even jumped to #1 of the Finnish Album Charts, and the same year she got awarded with the Nordic Music prize. Mirel Wagner was invited to perform her song "Oak Tree" at UK TV show Live with Jools Holland, other songs have been synched in serials as Fear The Walking Dead. Her latest contribution to the movies is her Ramones cover of "I Wanna Be Sedated" for Gore Verbinski's "A Cure For Wellness" (and a short appearance in Aki Kaurismäki's "The Other Side Of Hope").

Mirel Wagner has a distinctive approach and independent mind, releasing and performing her music at her own pace. Nevertheless since the release of her debut she's been constantly performing live solo at selected events and festivals in Europe, the US and in early 2016 first time Australia.

Currently she's writing new songs and probably will record something new in 2017.