

Time & Location
28 Oct 2022, 19:30
Dublin 1, 35 Liffey St. Lower, North City, Dublin 1, D01 C3N0, Ireland
About The Event
MCD Presents
Miya Folick + Guests
Friday October 28th
Tickets @Ticketmaster
When searching for a path to navigate through shame, grief, and the specific loneliness
that accompanies you even in a crowded room, look no further than the lyrical map-
making of Los Angeles based artist Miya Folick. Since her critically acclaimed debut
album, Premonitions, came out in 2018, Miya has been traversing some challenges of
her own. Letting yourself down, finding new ground, coming-of-age kind of challenges.
They all appear with fierce clarity on Miya’s new EP, 2007. An exhilarating mix of
sounds and styles, an eclecticism that reflects Miya’s increased writerly confidence and
playful disposition. These songs are about discovering that intensity doesn’t always
equal chaos. Sometimes excitement and joy and humor can be found in the quiet, out-
of-the-way places you never thought to look.
Premonitions was rightly praised for how it showcased Miya’s arresting, athletic, once-
in-a-lifetime voice. As soon as it was completed, though, Miya knew there was a deeper
and more honest place she wanted to live, lyrically. Some of the language on
Premonitions she describes as “a little bit opaque,” saying, “I was writing from a place of
fear. I didn’t want to look at myself directly, so I created lyrical obscurities. It felt like I
was masking my insecurities with poetry. Putting Premonitions out into the world and
singing those songs on tour made it very clear to me that I wanted to make songs where
I was not hiding.” She was determined for her subsequent project to be more direct and
honest, an aesthetic dealbreaker that begot a great deal of in-studio trial and error, with
Miya eventually recruiting behind-the-scenes personnel who brought out the best in her
and in the music, including producers Gabe Wax (War on Drugs, Fleet Foxes) and Mike
Malchicoff (King Princess, Bo Burnham), among others.
Listening to the finished EP, it’s immediately obvious that all the effort and
experimentation was worth it. Lead single “Oh God” commemorates the exact moment
she realized her life needed to change, with a soul-stirring chorus on which Miya almost
seems to harmonize with the divine; it’s part lightning-strike epiphany, part elegy for the
rollercoaster romance of youth. “Bad Thing,” which she co-wrote with Mitski and Andrew
Wells, is a paradoxically blissed-out burst of dancefloor-ready melancholia, with frank
lyrics about the hazards of hedonism: “Wake up, hand upon my forehead / Can’t believe
this is the way I live.” Miya’s percussive diction steers the song’s momentum, proof that
her voice is a singularly prolific instrument, even when it’s not doing gravity-defying
acrobatics.
2007 is an exhilarating mix of sounds and styles, an eclecticism that reflects Miya’s
increased writerly confidence and playful disposition. There’s a turn-of-the-century pop-
rock quality to “Nothing To See,” an angsty earworm with a hand-plucked acoustic riff
and hyper-specific lyrics about conforming to someone else’s expectations: “I’ve been
trying to change the way I look so you like what you see / I’ve been losing weight so I
can wear these Dolls Kill jeans.” On the EP’s title track, Miya’s unaffected, angelic-
sounding voice is cocooned by warm folk rock. The Matias Mora-produced “Cartoon
Clouds” embraces glitchy bedroom-pop of the delicate and handmade-feeling
persuasion. “I feel like people always want me to choose one. Either you're indie girl or
you're pop girl,” Miya says, reflecting on past production experiences. “But that’s not the
kind of choice I want to be making. The choices should always be in support of the song
feeling true to itself.”
The Chicago songwriter Gia Margaret adds piano to the EP’s closing track “Ordinary,” a
soulful song that recalls Mazzy Star’s wide-open dream-folk. “Our life is small but it’s big
enough for me,” Miya croons, emphasizing hers newfound interest in manifesting a
simpler way of living. Like a lot of creatively restless minds, Miya has always felt drawn
to intense emotions, intense people, and intense experiences. These gorgeous new
songs — a long-awaited return from a singular talent — are about discovering that
intensity doesn’t always equal chaos. Sometimes excitement and joy and humor can be
found in the quiet, out-of-the-way places you never thought to look.