Miracle Mile, Glow

Miracle Mile is a musical enigma. One listen to their latest release, Glow, makes you wonder if you’ve stumbled across an untapped musical gem or if you’ve just spent the last thirty minutes listening to lyrical Muzak.

The feel of Glow is sappy and somewhat lullaby-like. Some of the songs aren’t even sung but are instead just recited over the music. Those unsung songs read like a personal history lesson set to music, kind of like when your old elementary school teacher would rap about science to pique your interest. At first listen, I thought of The Police’s Outlandos D’Amour, but soon realized that the songs on Glow don’t have the same macabre undertones that made Outlandos so much fun.

The music isn’t half-bad, slow and kind of dreamy. Sans the lyrics, the album makes me feel like I should be lounging in an open meadow chewing on wheat and playing with fluffy, innocent little Labrador puppies. Assuming I wanted to be doing those things, Glow would be the perfect album to facilitate a lazy day in the country. Instead, I’m left feeling a little unnerved, because there’s a strange, quirky component throughout the album that’s a bit unsettling. Miracle Mile incorporates an element into their music that I’m not sure I’ve ever heard before: optimism. Don’t get me wrong, optimism is a beautiful thing, but this album’s optimism is like the nerdy guy in your high school who has no idea he is such a goober. The combination of the lyrics, the music, and the voice of Trevor Jones is so earnest and optimistic that it’s hard to stomach.

Glow‘s saving grace is its inclusion of unusual and uncommon instruments. One song, “An Average Sadness,” provides the only relief from the album’s overall syrupy disposition, finding a fantastic happy medium by putting somber and honest words to music. It flows; it meshes in an incredibly believable and sobering way. And that’s what is missing from most of glow Glow; the lyrics don’t fit the music or the voice of the artist presenting the words to you. This mismatch of musical pairings creates a surreal feeling that makes it hard to embrace the vision of the Miracle Mile duo.

Essentially, listening to Miracle Mile’s Glow is like hearing Kirk Van Houten’s “Can I Borrow a Feeling?” combined with A Night without Armor (Jewel’s lame attempt at poetry) set to a screwed-up version of elevator music.