|
Mieka Pauley cuts a confident and striking figure onstage. Self-assured and poised, she commands attention. Her regal presence owes just as much to her self-assured manner as it does her Cleopatra-style eye makeup. Pauley is in her element when standing in front of a microphone, guitar in hand. Right now, she is attempting to arrange the contents of her trunk so as to make room for everything.
Exasperated, she stands back for second, surmising the situation. She reaches in for a pair of tennis shoes, moves them under a case, slides a box over, and then tries again. It closes with the satisfying combination of slam-click like any well-closed trunk would. While the guitars and microphones have been put away, the music is still going on in Mieka Pauley’s head — as usual.
While she is in her mid-twenties, Pauley is already a well-traveled artist and no stranger to traveling with her gear. Locally, she has played almost everywhere that music is heard, from the intimate to the expansive and from the acoustic to the electric. Pauley is as capable of charming the small crowds in Cambridge’s Club Passim as she is of stepping up to the plate at Fenway Park and blasting out “The Star-Spangled Banner,” as she did this past June in front of 35,948 fired-up Red Sox fans. Pauley has excellent range in almost all aspects, but it all begins with the voice.
While a few common comparisons come up repeatedly, the diagnoses are usually all over the place. From Sarah McLachlan to Grace Slick and back to Joss Stone, Pauley’s dynamic vocals intrigue and enchant with a clear bite, both hot and cool at the same time. Onstage, a pronounced vibrato lends her voice a character similar to that of Fiona Apple, but her soaring and clean vocal tone makes McLachlan the reference point for most. There are similarities, but not a heavy resemblance. Whereas McLachlan’s angelic delivery soars in the eaves, Pauley’s earthy, sometimes-gritty vocal delivery occasionally growls and bites, as she does in a live performance of a song titled “Blunt” (available from her website as a free download). In the song, Pauley caustically addresses leering louts and barroom buffoons alike: “If this guitar wasn’t expensive / And I didn’t need it night and day / It’d make a pretty good blunt object / To convince you to go away.” If she is Sarah McLachlan, then she is a version of Sarah McLachlan with a switchblade in her shoe.
A silver-toned voice and some skills on the guitar only get a person so far, and Mieka Pauley has proven her adaptability to several situations and musical formats. “Different places call for different setups,” she says, and she is as comfortable solo as she is backed up by a full band. While her songs were obviously written in the acoustic format, they all translate well to full electric. She often takes the stage with members of Harriet Street although she recorded her record, Out of Car Wrecks and Hurricanes, with session musicians. She also recorded with a fellow named John Alagia, who has produced for John Mayer, Dave Matthews, and O.A.R., among others. Alagia helped full-blown arrangements come into bloom for the five-track EP.
It seems Pauley’s recordings have garnered as much attention as her captivating live performance; earlier in the summer, WBOS (92.9FM) added the standout track “Stronger” to regular rotation, with Music Director David Ginsburg delivering a ringing endorsement: “We believe that [Pauley] is a major talent and will break through to the mainstream sooner or later.”
With each passing chorus, “Stronger” grows in arrangement and intensity, starting out with Pauley’s lone voice singing the song’s chorus in a lower register, indicative of her impressive range. At the second pass, a high octave is added in, further recalling Sarah McLachlan’s earlier work; but the final time the chorus comes around, Pauley switches from sotto voce to full vocal crescendo, wailing into the microphone and bullwhipping her voice all over the track. This song is almost the quintessential Pauley track: sharp, confident, and ever-building; just like Mieka Pauley herself.