A year ago, Laura Burhenn was part of the Bright Eyes touring band. Flash forward and the 32-year-old Burhenn has gained enough confidence to unleash her own torrent of green-minded, anti-corporate, pro-Occupy Wall Street views. An entire album’s worth, in fact, on Generals (Saddle Creek), her sonically adventurous sophomore outing as one-woman band the Mynabirds. In her previous incarnations as a solo artist and part of Washington, D.C., folk/rock duo Georgie James—and even on her soulful 2010 Mynabirds debut, What We Lose In The Fire We Gain In The Flood. Burhenn will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our latest feature on her.
Burhenn: I know it’s not necessarily appropriate to fall in love with a couple. But it is romantic. And what could be more lovely than Miranda July and Mike Mills together? I’ve loved Miranda since I first saw Me And You And Everyone We Know, fell harder after reading her book of short stories, No One Belongs Here More Than You, and of course ate up It Chooses You. Her latest film, The Future, was better having read the book first, I’d say. Mike’s new film, Beginners, is one of the very best things I’ve seen ever. The way he lovingly revisits his relationship with his own father’s coming out (and battle with death) is remarkable, poetic. I just like imagining the Miranda and Mike brainstorming at opposite ends of a room on a Sunday morning (her at a typewriter, him with a yellow pencil sketching something on a scrap of paper), their minds separately, but synchronized, buzzing with caffeine and ideas, papers shuffling and cascading down desks and across the floor. And finally, after hours of working, the knowing smile shared somewhere in the middle of the room.
Video after the jump.
