UNCUT MAGAZINE " 4 stars out of 5 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MOJO MAGAZINE " It's folly to think that in order to make a groundbreaking record, it has to be overtly weird, 'modern'-sounding, and Mi and L'au prove this to defiantly
understated effect. What a find ! "
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N.Y TIMES - Live review
When it comes to a musical persona, "modern-day Adam and Eve" isn't a bad
choice. If any duo can pull it off, it's the quiescent Mi and L'au. As their
lore has it, the former model Mira Romantschuk, who is Finnish, and the
French soundtrack musician Laurent Leclère fell in love in Paris a few years
back, then moved to a woodland cabin outside Helsinki, where for four years
they lived simply, writing spare songs that do more with space and silence
than with notes and words.
Existing in the same universe as the neo-folker Devendra Banhart, whom Mr.
Leclère befriended in the 1990's, they engage an idea of "North" in ways
that connect them with the whispery Canadian singer Julie Doiron and even
Sigur Ros of Iceland. But rather than Sigur Ros's grandiose snowy expanses,
the landscape these two explore is the space between them, knowable yet
unknowable in its dimensions.
On any given evening, Ludlow Street on the Lower East Side is thronged with
beautiful people. But weaving through the Christmas-lighted Cake Shop on
Friday, the pale and waifish Mi and the dark, beatific L'au looked like
particularly exquisite works of art - tall and pipe-cleaner thin, pointy
boots poking from jeans worn the way designers only dream they'll be.
Sitting close on wooden chairs on the tiny stage with their identical blond
acoustic guitars, they played 12 of the hundreds of songs they've amassed
while living, as the soft-spoken L'au smilingly mumbled, "with the bears and
salmon." Three were from their self-titled debut album released in the
United States on Young God records. These they played without the sonic
augmentation provided on the record by their label's owner, Michael Gira
(former leader of the Swans), as well as by musicians from Akron/Family and
others.
L'au, about whom Mr. Banhart wrote "Gentle Soul," makes up for his rather
nondescript voice with his guitar facility. His assured low pulses and
fingerpicked interludes keep things from slipping too far into conceptual
ice-floe slowness. On songs like "Philosopher," which muses on the
connection between walking and lucid thinking, the pair display their sense
of humor. Potentially cloying lines like "I welcome you nude," from the
esoteric but sensual waltz "Nude," are balanced by piquant ones, like the
contingent request, "Wash your complaints."
Mi, who spoke six languages when she met L'au but added French for his sake,
was the one whose singing hushed the club's chatter. As her long,
honeysuckle hair fell forward over her Kelly-green blouse, her haunting tone
infused "Robot" with a post-Edenic dread. In "Paranoid," she adopted the
voice of an officious customs agent, asking, "What do you declare?" and
"What is your crime?," answering back, as herself, "Paranoia." Her lovely,
droning "Creation" compelled rapt attention even though few understood the
Swedish lyrics comparing committed love to a silkworm's generative process.
She performed the show's encore, "The Cat," while L'au sipped wine and
relaxed to the left of the stage. The song, with its entreaty, "We must
remember nature," no doubt prompted collective cosmopolitan fantasies of
getting back to the garden.
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