Mia Doi Todd

Contextual healing

By CHRISTINE LIU

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She's got a Yale degree, a sizable mess of hair and a voice that won't absolve its seductive tendencies—despondent, soulful—lingering like honey at the bottom of your tea. Throw in lilting, unassailable guitar and a healthy dose of hippie-that-grew-up wisdom and you've got Mia Doi Todd cradling her poignant acoustic folk. On Gea, her seventh album designed to heal the world-weary, the outlook isn't so bleak: A harmonium breathes throughout with its soothing lungful of harmonies and a cluster of collaborating musicians (including bassist Joshua Abrams of Prefuse 73) comprise an instrumental menagerie.

"I wanted to make hopeful, healing music," the Los Angeles-based musician relates on the phone from Washington, D.C., one stop along the North America Green Tour with José González. "There's a lot of negativity in the world, especially in the political situation, a hopelessness." With Gea, she wishes to evoke "earth and its healing and restorative, regenerative qualities."

Between cooing a yearning Japanese phrase to Brazilian cadence on "Kokoro" and bringing a Spanish poem by her friend Armando Suárez-Cobián to life, the tracks resonate with shimmering impulse. Unsurprisingly, the album was recorded in 12 days and mixed for about a week. "It was a very concise recording project," says Todd. "I wanted something that had a lot of life to it." Most of it was recorded live, playing together in a room, the old-fashioned way. "That's exactly how it is," she confirms when asked if the album ran on instinct. "Very cathartic and fast."

MIA DOI TODD

W/ JOSE GONZALEZ

THU. 3.13

967 COMM. AVE.

617.562.8800

8PM/18+/$22.50

THE DISE.COM