There’s a spotlight beating down on Holly Miranda these days.
The ex-Jealous Girlfriends front woman’s recently-released album is getting impressive reviews, and Miranda is now on a tour that will take her across America and the Atlantic Ocean before ending in New York later this year.
Every time the Brooklyn-based singer gets on stage, there’s a subsequent review written about a thin brunette in jeans and a ‘t’ getting on stage and absolutely knocking the crowd over with the sheer strength of her voice.
Whether reading a review of her album or a performance, there’s a recurring theme that’s easy to spot: The emotional honesty and passion of Miranda’s voice is as obvious on The Magician’s Private Library, the debut solo album from the 27-year-old singer/songwriter, as it is on stage.
Another element of Miranda’s music, attracting the attention of a growing legion of fans and impressing critics, is the importance and examination of dreams, dreaming, and the sometimes stark contrast between our lives when awake and asleep. And since Miranda is a self-proclaimed dream-obsessed artist, Magician’s might be the perfect representation of the artist herself.
“My first memory was my first dream, when I was 2 … not the actual dream, but waking from it and not understanding what had just happened. I think that’s when it started.”
The “it” Miranda refers to is what can reasonably be described as a love affair with dreams, or, at the very least, a committed relationship that continues today.
There’s even a dream-like quality when Miranda talks about her creative process: “It’s never the same way twice … sometimes I hear a lyric that gets stuck in my head and I repeat it until it makes sense. Does that make sense?”
The admitted importance of dreams to Miranda, and her reflection upon the phenomenon on Magician’s, is almost a dare to put her in some defined box — the new-age indie rocker, or the ever-optimistic dreamer — but a singular definition doesn’t do Holly Miranda justice.
There’s a realist inside Miranda that is apparent the second you look past the performer belting out a song on stage. From a childhood in a strict Pentecostal home, to a trip to Russia’s Chernobyl region that forever altered her life, to coming out, there isn’t much about Miranda’s past that hasn’t been exposed. “But trust me, I have a crazy life and you don’t even know the half of it … being out, coming from religion, that’s easy.”
