Mimi Gilbert: Grew Inside The Water | 4ZZZ Brisbane 102.1FM

- I think of Mimi Gilbert as a stranger to these shores, an old-school folk rambler who’s never in one place for long. It’s interesting to notice that nearly every place she turns up -walking long distances alone in Coffs Harbour, embracing vagabond freedom in Santa Cruz, recording a record in Wellington, or getting back to home for now in Melbourne- they’re all coastal towns, never too far from the sea. I don’t think it’s a coincidence. Water runs through much of her songwriting: in brooding storms and cleansing rain and, as per the title of her new record, Grew Inside The Water, it’s essential to the life she’s trying to piece together.

I only came to her music through the album’s title track, an early single and lyrically one of the more abstract here, a breakup song too wrapped up in its melancholy to really tell you what’s going on. The verses are pensive, hard-eyed and accusing in equal measure. The bridges from verse to chorus, by contrast, are like epiphanies, a dawning awareness that tears the scales from the eyes, brings the walls crashing down and the pent up feelings flooding forth. I’m not quite sure where I read it, but I remember Gilbert saying that for her water symbolises both human connection and artistic endeavour, so one of these stood out especially: “I grew inside the water of somebody I heard sing / And right then I met my mother, right then I heard her scream.” Then the chorus is freed by both anger and a kind of cathartic, fierce joy which bubbles over the top of the quiet, acoustic songwriting. “I never asked for much from you / How could I be angry then? / Is it all true?” The lyrics reject the one who wronged her, even as the music reclaims herself, her strength.

Even though the music can be deceptive, often gentle and at odds with the lyrics, that song’s a real whirl of emotion and so’s the record. Pain, sadness, anger and happiness chase each other round till sometimes you can’t tell one from another. The songs are like Gilbert trying to pick them apart, a personal experience jumble sale where she works out which bits of emotional baggage she wants to do away with and which she wants to keep. It’s not just a breakup record, either. Gilbert sings about herself and her ex and dealing with grief, but beyond that it’s about rebuilding the self as well, tackling mental health and emotional wholeness on cuts like Dark Storm, Losing Your Mind and Taught To Build Walls. On occasion it extends even further, asking how life is best lived. On the surprisingly breezy Society's A Mansion she sings: “I almost feel free honey that’s for sure / And I don’t know what I came here for / I ain’t playing games so get off my back / If society’s a mansion I want to live in a shack”.

It’s worth noting the significance of place for Gilbert, woven throughout these songs. You get the feeling that much of her itinerant lifestyle is driven by emotion, when you hear lyrics like “I can’t cry here” or “It’s not the city that I hate”, the passages describing long walks in search of self from Coffs Harbour and Ireland Song, or the nostalgic yearning for the years spent, footloose in California. You get the feeling if she could just find the city that made her felt right, she'd stay there forever and that Mimi Gilbert’s journey, both musical and actual, is a long search for comfort and shelter.

Whatever else she’s gained from years on the road, Mimi Gilbert -playing on the streets since the age of fifteen- has a wide array of influences, which she makes good use of. The presence of Nick Drake, Joni Mitchell, Mazzy Star, Gillian Welch, Laura Marling and very many more can be felt peeking through the fine detail and subtle restraint of her songcraft. As is appropriate for a recording about growing the soul, there are also some green shoots on Grew Inside The Water. Her first recorded in a proper studio, it has allowed Gilbert to flex her full band, which, from time to time, she does. A song like Losing Your Mind reminds me of the fiery power of Angel Olsen as it builds from a six-eight saunter through soulful backing vocals and an amplified country roar. Classic songwriting abetted by subtlety, depth and variation: there’s quite a lot in this record, if you spend the time.

I don’t know how long Australia will get to keep Mimi Gilbert, or which stretch of coastline will be the one where she finds her peace of mind. We like to borrow the music of a lot of good musicians who find their way here and, while she chooses to stay, I’m very happy to share water with her.

- Chris Cobcroft.
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