Mia Vigar - 'True Adventures Happen Inside Your Head' (Hungry Audio) Released 03/11/08

Follow the map from Joanna Newsom's 'The Milk-Eyed Mender' over a hump-back bridge to Lullatone and Piana, then take a left at the fork where CoCo Rosie meets Tegan & Sara, and we get an idea of the kooky ascetic that Mia Vigar chart. Having recorded under the monikers Luma Lane and True Adventures, Mia Vigar dons her own name on this her first album, 'True Adventures Happen Inside Your Head', and brings along collaborators David Brewis (Field Music), members of Sennen and Master Solo. It's a pajama-pop aesthetic that finds Vigar's child-like voice spar with toy-town indie-pop and a whisper of bath-time psychedelia, Vigar's juvenile voice the kind Japanese artists Konki Duet and Piana inhabit, with Vigar singing tales of seashells and love earned, people speaking backwards, and trading toy soldiers for real boys.

'Seaside' and 'Wondering Through Your Window' are wonderfully dreamy and  Vigar's voice sounds like a child's reverie, the former with nursery rhyme verse, toy-box electronica and slow piano, the latter features a warmth of synth chords à la Readymade F.C., while the bouncy 'I Dare You' has a Ting Tings-like choppiness with cha cha - imagine Half Man Half Biscuit doing girly-pop about a crap diner and you get the drift, Vigar singing with an almost mockney accent - "...let's just get out of here/ and make a run, run, run/ for it/ I dare ya...". 'Wish You Rocked My World' will keep Belle & Sebastian lovers happy (there's even a lyrical reference to Glasgow), while the ethereal and imagistic 'Fur' is like wearing a fur coat with no knickers (I guess!!!) as celestial electronica meets hovering angelic vocals and a distant kudo drum is heard as Vigar sings - "I've been waiting around for you/ to ask me over/ you've got some healthy things/ I think/ I'm bowled over...".
 
'You're On My Mind Now' and 'Lost Cause' are chipper piece of frisco-disco vintage pop that remind of old Peel faves, Girls At Our Best, Vigar singing on the former - "...your cold hands on my nerve endings...I will keep you for at least another ow, ow, ow, hour...". 'Pipelines', however, nosedives with a Kate Nash too far, and 'Sooothsayer' takes a chainsaw to any tree-house of respite with an angular piece of angsty and unsettling art-noise that's littered with screams and rollicking drums. 'La Jalousie' has a strange, incandescent, witchy psychedelia, Vigar singing - "...fair is fair/ as fair shall be..." as child-like warbly samples are draped across a hall of mirrors of keyboards and guitar to quirky effects, and 'Backwards' inhabits a Clangers-like toy-town from vintage keyboards, accordion and sound-effects that's even weirder, while 'Taxi' sounds like a Sesame Street jolly.

Someone must have written a study by now on how the sonic experimentalism of Scandinavian acts and Japanese artists are steadily orbitting each other. 'True Adventures Happen Inside Your Head' is cut from the experimental cloth of pastiche-pop meets electronica, the kind of border-less sonic parameters explored by Japanese experimentalists/collagists Kazumasa Hashimoto and Scandinavia's múm. Even the track 'Box' sounds uncannily like early Cinematic Orchestra. On paper so many different ideas shouldn't work, but 'True Adventures Happen Inside Your Head' keeps the interest perked with Vigar's juvenile voice coupled with fun-filled midnight-snack-pop moments.