Manzanita

Mia’s fifth album, Manzanita, was released in 2005 on the LA indie label Plug Research. Produced by Brent Rademaker and Rob Campanella at VisionQuest Studios, the album revels in a breezy California folk rock style, featuring guest performances by Neal Casal, Beachwood Sparks, Dead Meadow and Future Pigeon. “The Way" starts the album, its apocalyptic worldview expressed in drum-and-bass groove overlaid with psychedelic electric guitar drones. "What If We Do,” with its shimmering lap steel solo, and the '70s-style orchestrated soft rock of "The Last Night of Winter" are among the best songs of Todd's lengthy and prolific career. The full-band tracks are interspersed with solo piano or guitar songs like the haunting "Muscle, Bone and Blood" and the beautiful, homely romanticism of "I Gave You My Home" that recall Todd's early, completely solo recordings. Mia closely identifies her love for California in the manzanita bush with its smooth red bark and tiny bell-shaped flowers. The title Manzanita is a nod to Mia’s Japanese American ancestry. Manzanar is the most well known of the Japanese American internment camps. Mia’s mother and grandparents, aunts and uncles, were interned with over 110,000 other Japanese Americans during World War II. In calling the album Manzanita, Mia was referring to herself as a girl of Manzanar. On a pilgrimage to Tule Lake internment camp, with her mother and another Tule Lake internee, the actor George Takei, Mia discovered that manzanita bushes thrived in the poor soil and desert conditions around the camp.

Folk minimalist splits her latest record between sparse songs and genre exercises.

Following the potentially career-ending botch of her sole major-label album The Golden State, on which solo acoustic songs from her earlier indie albums were drenched with producer Mitchell Froom's inappropriate keyboards and a listless, un-complementary backing band, Mia Doi Todd retreated to indiedom.