credits: Mia Riddle

I’m not a music reviewer. I don’t even really like music. I mean, maybe I do; I listen to music I like constantly, obsessively, repetitively. But as a whole I don’t really like music: I am not a music enthusiast.

I do not go to shows. The last time I paid money to see a band play was Radiohead at Coachella in 2004. And when I say I paid to see Radiohead, I mean that I drove to Indio at night, watched Radiohead play, and drove back to Phoenix.

So I’m a bit wary to talk about albums at all - I may not understand them. I understand people better than albums, so I think I will talk that.

The longest concentrated conversation I ever had with Mia Riddle was on Ben Nabors’ girlfriend’s parents’ rooftop on Union Square West sometime after Ben left LVHRD. It was October, but not yet cold. The roof was open on three sides: the rising white lights of the Chrysler building.

credits: Mia Riddle, her band

I had given up drinking for some reason or another (I do that from time to time until it gets boring) so I drank soda water and kept pouring Mia champagne as we hung slack-legged over chaise lounge chairs, sensing objects loose the certainty of borders as we flushed towards night.

We talked about front porches, bedroom partitions, packing for a trip. Mia was getting ready to go on her most recent UK tour where she would visit rooms hemmed in moss-stones, breath out strands of bog-mist, hear a dog bark.

As we talked, as we passed more into night, as Mia became more drunk, I understood that music is only another name for the way we hold words up to the light.

We were talking about places - Scotland, England, Ireland - and experiences - “Is my lover too attractive for me?” Later, she might approach these tropes in a song; later I would approach them here, as I write this attraction.

What I hear when I listen to music is almost not the music - that is why I say I do not like music. When I listen to music I hear all the places and moments that have brought me to the music.

credits: Mia Riddle, her band

Mia Riddle is an incredibly insightful, direct, prescient woman. I am very glad that I know her and I am very glad that she is making music, for I think she will become very well-known for it.

Today Mia asked me if I wanted to hear something, “It’s been gestating for 9 months,” she said. “P.S., there’s a choir. I really don’t fuck around.”

I didn’t think she did.

Mia’s new album is called Tumble and Drag. You can download the album as well as the lyrics at MissMandible.com. The artwork is very nice too.