Mia Doi Todd has been on my radar now for a few years since first reading about her in a magazine left in a North End laundromat. "Wow. This is good stuff," I thought, as her voice struck me with a soft punch beneath the whir of an industrial dryer. At her lightest, Todd's voice is as passive and pastoral as a Twinkie in these days of fog and irony. At her heaviest, she can really cram a lyrical concept down your throat and leave you spitting out bits of words. Shortly after my laundry-room experience, it came as no surprise that my Lit-loving roommate brought home a copy of Todd's Come Out of Your Mine (1999, Communion). After a few listens, I was digging the disc quite a bit -- especially the easy "Sunday Afternoon" and the acappella "Age." Since then, my appreciation of the album has grown to include about half of the songs, especially the lead off track, "Independence Day," which has since been re-recorded for her Sony/Columbia debut, The Golden State (2002).

Oh, did I forget to mention? She went from being 'Mia Doi Who?' to being signed to a major recently, and I, for one, am a little baffled. Not to say that I doubt her talent or ability to appeal to a large audience, but for all of my knowledge of the music industry, I have no reason to think that Todd's music could have the same mass appeal of other young and talented artists with acoustic guitars, such as Ryan Adams or Ani Difranco. Todd explains, "I wanted to reach more people. I wanted to evolve." Who doesn't want these things? She continues, "I know what it is to do it all by myself. I know the limits of that. I am happy to have more people working with me now to amplify my voice. I am being challenged." I love how she puts that-'amplify my voice?'-how she humanizes the industry, and thinks of 'it' as 'people' who as actually helping rather than hurting (as opposed to how the industry is generally depicted).

Just listening to Mia Doi Todd explain how she got involved in music makes the business seem very innocent. "I started going to indie rock shows in LA as a teenager. I dated a fellow in a band and was introduced to that world. While a student at Yale University, an intense music scene was brewing there, and I started writing many songs, performing them often. I was singing in a band, but my voice couldn't be heard, so I went solo." When I suspiciously ask her how she thinks Sony is trying to market her, she answers, "as an artist."

Actually, my only reason for doubting Todd's potential to be huge is that she strikes me as one of the last and latest of the true folkies. I'm not talking about urban folk, or contemporary folk, or even singer/songwriter. I'm talking straight traditional folk: acoustic guitars, mellow-yellow, morality tales, attentive audiences, the whole nine yards. To be sure, the kind of folk her music most resembles is 1960's British-folk (the good stuff ), alá Bridget St. John, Jacqui McShee, Sandy Denny, and Anne Briggs. And boy does she resemble them. It's eerie. I think if you snuck her onto a mix tape with that stuff, people would be none the wiser. Indie labels who make their bread and butter off 60's Brit-folk clones, like Blue Sanct (The Ididerod, Stone Breath) and Camera Obscura (In Gowan Ring, Sharon Kraus) can only wish they had a thoroughbred like Todd.

Is this kind of music popular, I wonder? Is there a cash cow here? A friend of mine speculates that Sony may be thinking they can make Mia Doi Todd their Cat Power (who Todd sometimes resembles in her dazed soliloquies), if they can only make her strange enough....

A cursory listen to last year's ZeroOne (self-released) was a bit of a disappointment for me probably because I was looking for another dose of traditional folk and didn't get it. A change had begun. The album's lead track "Digital" lost me with it's droney round of monotonous lines accompanied only by Mia's spidery fingerpicking. I don't think the song had more than one chord. For whatever reason, I didn't hear about Mia or her new record deal for a year or two until recently when I made a stop by her glossy new web site and was met with a sampling of the new rocked-out version of "Digital" complete with skittery, techno-like drumming.

Yes fellow humbugs, Mia's new record, The Golden State, features beats on many songs, not to mention a panoply of keyboards, bells, and of course, whistles. In fact, Todd has recently collaborated with Electronic artist Dntel. What is going on here? "He is a friend of mine. He just made a beautiful remix of my song 'Growing Pains.' He and I are contemporaries," she responds. I ask her if she is allowing her music to shift from traditional-folk to being more contemporarily stylized recently. "I was not consciously a traditional folk musician before. The boundaries in music are illusions, and they are fast disappearing." But, I wondered, isn't she a fan of Anne Briggs, Sandy Denny, and Pentangle? "No," she begins, "I am not familiar with their work."

She then proceeded to play seven or eight tunes in a row, whereupon she announced that those were all from her new album which was comprised of songs from her previous three albums and that you could purchase an album for twelve dollars, and a t-shirt for twelve dollars, or both for twenty ... (panting, out of breath...). I wondered, did e.e. cummings have to do his own marketing. Probably, he did go to Harvard, was in WWI, and married multiple times. Her appearance during her set was that of a stone statue pivoting slowly from left to right. Not cavalier, by any means, I was surprised if not shocked when she slipped an "Oh, yeah" into one of her songs. Mia Doi Todd just does not rock. It was great.

On record, but even more so live, Todd has a voice that is like a French horn among women. It really has a lovely, encapsulated sound. It is not open, but closed and dulcet. I can't really say she sounds like anyone. Maybe a little like Pentangle's Jaqui McShee, or Mo Tucker from The Velvet Underground (an in-tune Mo Tucker if that). Apparently, she has had some kind of operatic training. I suppose I can hear this, although she has a much deeper voice than you would expect from somebody with this kind of background. "I went to a Christian grammar school (though I was not raised as one), and we sang many beautiful songs," says Todd. "This was my first experience with music. I took private voice lessons as a teenager and sang in choral groups."

It would be inappropriate within the scope of what she does lyrically to force or push notes for passionate effect. Everything is very subdued and well tempered like J. S. Bach's proverbial clavier. To make her instrument sound good, she acknowledges its range and works within those parameters. You will never catch Todd emoting. She is light years away from someone like Billy Bragg.

Speaking to her briefly before the show, I am immediately struck by her peculiar elfin presence. There is something slightly off about the intonation of her speech that is simply from another place. She is dressed in a homemade earth-tone floor length skirt that could double as a vanishing cloak. She is petite. Mystically feminine. If you ever meet her, you may know, too. The deliberation of her speech. Her patient but penetrating look of intention. Her Tinkerbell hair cut.

Perhaps one of the reasons I find her so enchanting is that she seems to be merely making a pit-stop on the cosmic boulevard of rock 'n' roll. She tells me, "This has been a fulfilling path for me. I've been able to travel and play many places." At one point later, I write her and ask what she would like to be when she's done being a rock star. "I would like to be a mother," she answers, "I want to continue my research into painting, butoh dance, clothing design, and ancient history. I'd like to write a novel and screenplay before I'm done." Why not stop off on Neptune for a glass of helium for me, I wonder, while you're at it.

As we stand in the basement of The Middle East, she asks me what kind of music I cover. I try to explain as best as I can that I write about indie music without saying so. I say, "guitar-related musics." I really want to answer that question in such a way that I can make her feel like she fits. But frankly, I don't know how she fits. I just know she's good. I tell her that I really enjoy her first album Come Out of Your Mine. "That's not the first album," she replies, "there is an album before called The Ewe and The Eye." Todd also informs me that she is hoping to rerelease this 1997 debut (on Xmas records), which like Come Out of Your Mine, is just voice and guitar. Like many things sweet and true, this debut is nowhere to be found, and is probably amazing.

I later discover the curious detail that it was actually Brent Rademaker from Beechwood Sparks who helped Todd get her start with The Ewe and The Eye. If you are like me and are a fan of these So. Cal. Buffalo Springfield updates, you never would have guessed such a connection. "Beechwood Sparks are longtime friends of mine. I was a big fan of Further, the band they were in a previous incarnation," Todd explains. "They are the ones that introduced me to do-it-yourself rock & roll. They are great musicians, and we've grown up together. I think we do share some aesthetic, even if it's not obvious."

As she mentions during her set, most of the songs on The Golden Age are taken from her previous three albums. Presumably, this means that Sony thinks that most of the people who are going to buy the album don't own Todd's other albums-otherwise, why would they fork out twelve bucks for an album of rerecorded material? The Golden Age does however include three brand new compositions, probably the best of her most recent batch. Says Todd, "Songs are tattoos. I'm still wearing all the ones I've ever written, even if they get blurry. I still sing my old songs; they are a part of me. I wanted those songs to reach more people. My voice has matured in some ways. The songs have gained new meanings. When it came time to pick the songs, the list evolved over a few months-I considered which songs called out for a new life, which ones were meaningful to me at the time we were getting ready to record, which ones worked together to make a new album." I concede that it might make sense from Todd's point of view to put her best songs on her major label debut, but from a fan's perspective, this is not a proper fourth album.

Although she denies it, it seems to me that Sony has enough faith in Todd to give her a record deal, but only if she adds some 'snazzy sounds that will really jazz the kids, if you know what I mean, daddy-o.' But Todd assures that the new arrangements of the material are fruits of her own vision. Curiously though, if Sony just wanted to release a 'greatest hits so-far' package, couldn't they have used the fine recordings from Todd's existing oeuvre? My guess is that they really didn't want her to play straight folk and thought it was important that she update her sound. Also, they probably thought that it was too cheap to record straight folk. The accountants probably panicked too. Yet to everybody's credit, I think that Sony, Todd, and producer Mitchell Froom all made some good choices. The Golden Age is a solid disc; probably Todd's best yet. Todd's voice and guitar on the rerendering of "Autumn" are accompanied by overly simplistic drums, bass, and piano that are seemingly dumbed-down, but beautiful. The bittersweet melody and Todd's deadpan delivery of lyrics such as "No, no, no, I know / I'm not your job" remind me of Nico's performance of "These Days" on '67s wonderful Chelsea Girl. With a brightly plucked guitar, "Like a Knife," is a gentle eulogy with enough warmth to draw you irresistibly into its repetition. These are the types of songs that ultimately draw me to Todd.

A new song, "Growing Pains," presents a perfect opportunity to show Todd's ability to coax a gorgeous song out of a piano. Likewise, with tasteful embellishments, "Hijkata" compels. Thankfully for this writer, familiar songs such as "Poppy Fields" and "Independence Day" are faithful to Todd's original guitar and voice versions.

Suspicions arise as to how Sony could be trying to sell Todd. The unbecoming techno-like drums of tracks such as "88 Ways" and "Digital" (tracks one and two to assure their attention?) could only be meant to appeal to someone under the age of 30. But Todd explains, "In arranging the song order, this was the best way, it seemed the only way to go. There is an arc and flow that must occur in every song and in the album as a whole." Also, I detect that "Growing Pains" and "88 Ways," which feature sections with prominently double-tracked vocals, intentionally benchmark the sound of someone like Dido. Could this be intentional? On whose part? On the same note, a smart melody, fuzzy drum samples and a bluesy guitar figure give "Merry Me" a Beth Orton cum Cat Power flava. Could Sony be trying to sell Todd to a largely female audience of post-college, post-Sarah McLaughlin, recovering Lilith-Fair-steps?

Probably not, I conclude. In Todd's defense, a piercing purity and generally excellent lyrics counter-lever any bullshit that Sony may be trying to pull. The last word of the album is the title track, "Age of Reason." This should have been the first song of the album, and rightly so, I suggest that all fans of MIA's previous work start the album on this track. With just an acoustic guitar sparse enough to fly a bi-plane through, Todd sounds so much like Anne Briggs that it is scary. Todd floridly arms the song with a rich British peasant melody and a haiku-like lyrical concept, conclusively showing that it is possible to do things as well as they did back in the old days.

She laments:
" In my age of reason
Complicated by feeling
I dream of impossible things."

Will some listeners feel alienated by Todd's lyrics or think that she is trying to sound smart? "I hope not," she says, "I think the meaning in my songs can seep into people's subconscious and be digested over time. Many of the ideas in the songs are very basic, things that everybody thinks about. Why not bring those ideas out in pop music? I hope to reach as many ear/mind/hearts as possible. I am aware that my music does not appeal to everyone, but it does create a space in which to think and dream. People need that. Life is so hectic these days." Will other listeners find her pretentious? I recently read a criticism of the aforementioned song "Digital" on-line, calling it pretentious art-school philosophizing. I thought this was pretty funny, considering I am a pretentious art-school philosopher.

We know that computers deal with a binary language of ones and zeroes, and that CDs themselves, are nothing but ones and zeros. I also know that this song was originally recorded by Todd on a home computer. Voila, a nice turn of events to release such a song originally in '01 on an album called ZeroOne. Somebody was being triply clever. "Digital" begins:

"Digital, binary system, ones & zeroes, dark vs. light
Yin & yang, x & y, my mother and my father made me one night."

For years, poets have been trying to reconcile technology and nature, far and near. I asked Todd if she saw technology as a part of nature. "Yes," she replied, "we humans and all we create are part of nature. The earth is one organism made of many interrelated parts. Humanity, in its accelerated growth, threatens the globe like a cancer. We are rediscovering our part in the whole. It will take time to repair the damage done. We must make new machines that burn clean."

Doesn't the Tao de Change say, "Without going out of my room, I can know the ways of heaven; the farther one travels, the less one knows?" (No, that was The Beatles, now pass the hashish). I guess what I'm trying to say is I think that Todd belongs to the school of Ancient Eastern poetry whose wisdom easily resolves paradoxes. I ask her if she thinks in these terms. "Absolutely," she replies. Alas, the song continues further with a grander opinion of Scientific Creations:

"In the beginning, a murky mass of hydrogen helium
voted to organize
Into higher elements, carbon nitrogen & oxygen,
protons electrons collide."

By this time, I'm starting to get it. Maybe MIA is explaining to me why she can have beats in her songs and yet still be pure and beautiful, and real 'folk.' Because technology is nature, so get over it. There is no paradox.

"Forbidden fruit rotting on the vine.
Forbidden fruit turning to wine. Intoxicating."

Does this sound like haiku or what? It is the decomposition of the sugar in fruit, or the death, which intoxicates us. What does that sound like, Proust? "The greater is the beauty, the profounder is the stain. Significant of the forbidden, transgressed in eroticism" (that's actually Stereolab). Let's just say Todd speaks simply and accurately about complicated subjects. And in my book, that makes for some pretty good poetry. I tell Todd that most of her songs seem to be about love in one way or another. She responds, "Yes, all my songs are about love. My life is all about art ... and love ... and food." "And freedom," I add.

I wonder, do the big boys have a conscience? Are they gonna start putting out some good stuff? I admit, I'm a little too iconoclastic and elitist when it comes to major labels. I don't trust them. Luckily, Todd was able to work with Mitchell Froom, which if I guess you're going to be manipulated, he's one of the guys you'd want to have do it. I mean, he's done Suzanne Vega, Crowded House, Los Lobos, Elvis Costello, Ron Sexsmith - all respectable music for grown-ups. Todd on Froom: "He has so much experience making albums. In creating a sonic landscape, he insists on making one decision based on the next, not leaving all the choosing until the mixing. That was a very valuable insight. He is a very kind man. We worked well together."

I realize that the main factor that has made me resist the production recently slapped on Todd's music is that I simply love 1960's British folk music I guess that's my problem though -- not Todd's. There's something really comforting about the sound of the crystalline voice of a maiden and a quietly-urged guitar. In Cambridge recently performing a month long residency at The Middle East, Todd (thankfully) performed with just an acoustic guitar. As I sat in the crowd with fifteen other people, I was waiting for some Cambridge lefty to just up and shout "Judas! How dare you put beats in your songs? Are you gonna let Sony cash-in and do a David Gray or Beth Orton on you? We want the old Mia" (wait, actually, I think I was that Cambridge liberal). Todd took the center of the stage with a glass of red wine saying she had just come from Los Angeles and was not used to the cold. From what I now know of her, she could have been referring to the New England audience.

Todd replies, "Yes. Many of my songs deal with issues of freedom and independence on a personal level and on a grander social/political scale, the struggle for freedom and what to do when you get there, when the captor is oneself. Love is many things, and many things are mistaken for love."

" Digital" continues:
" Nakedly we lay in an ecstatic embrace, trying not to come
Too quickly, one minute rise, plastic bagged lubricated safety tube.
This is not a through street, one cannot pass here,
But where me and you meet to graze the divine pastures.
This is not a through street, one cannot pass here."

After already having set the pretext for the mystical/sexual subject in the beginning of the song, she brings us to as utterly personal situation that many of us can relate to. The irreconcilable paradox of the "safe-sex" of our age and the recklessness and complete abandon called for by the essence of love making. She analyzes the condom in such a peculiar manner, as an object completely out of place. Why do we resist the biology that is so much greater than us? Heck, I know all about this. I have a 10-week-old baby, and I was pretty scared at first. Now I say, right on MIA, let the lovers meet in the divine pastures.

"But run and jump with two feet and break through all the matter. Throw your body to the edge of crisis. Paralysis is everywhere.
Throw your body to the edge of crisis. Paradise is everywhere."

I'm sure she's addressing her lover's sperm right? Or is it him metaphorically. Or do the metaphorical and the literal co-exist in the same moment? Another paradox - wait, holy ones and zeroes Batman.... Or how she uses paralysis and paradise as near-homonyms'" Says Todd, "I am captivated by language and it's evolution. My mind (and my mouth) deconstruct it and rearrange it so that it has many layers of meaning. "I love puns, rhymes, and alliteration." From one art-school philosopher to another, I like Todd, even at her most pretentious.

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