Album review: Mia Doi Todd's 'Cosmic Ocean Ship'

Mia Doi Todd is anything but bashful about her touchy-feely New Age leanings: Before the end of the first song on her new studio album, the local folkie has mentioned coconuts, butterflies, açaí and mango juice. (Here’s a CD you can assume will find its way to the checkout aisle at Whole Foods.)

Elsewhere on “Cosmic Ocean Ship,” Todd refers to a lover as “the salt in [her] sea,” requests a restorative embrace from Mother Nature and wonders of an overcrowded, war-ravaged world, “Can we fix it with our love?”

In “Skipping Stones,” this California judge’s daughter even lays out a slogan perfect for bumper-sticker use by a candidate in next year’s presidential election: “Water the plants / Do a little dance.”

Yet if Todd makes it easy to poke fun at her earnestness, she also makes music that’s hard to resist: Layering airy but precise vocal melodies atop hushed, largely acoustic arrangements, the singer offers up a crystal-clear distillation of the vintage Laurel Canyon sound currently in vogue among Todd’s feather-and-denim cohorts; indeed, “Cosmic Ocean Ship” might be the best argument yet in favor of the East-of-Hollywood hipster-hippie thing.

And though her lyrics seem allergic to comedy, Todd’s collaboration with producer Jonathan Wilson yields the occasional splash of instrumental wit, as when a drum roll straight out of Steely Dan’s “Do It Again” crops up in “Paraty,” a song about an imagined land of milk and honey.

Mia Doi Todd
“Cosmic Ocean Ship”
(City Zen)
Three stars (Out of four)

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Comments

[meeshka bernabe]

What do coconuts and mango juice have to do with "New Age"? It would be so refreshing to hear commentary from someone who has chosen to approach an album with ears unstained by stereotypes. Glad to hear this critic approves of her music, but the associations made here feel... too easy.