*** Miranda July

10 MILLION HOURS A MILE

(Kill Rock Stars)

Stranded somewhere in that often treacherous gray area between stand-up comedy and dramatic monologue, Miranda July could be described as a performance artist if that designation didn't carry with it an art-school stigma. She's also known, at least in underground film circles, for the Big Miss Moviola project, a series of video compilations featuring work by women filmmakers that July compiles and distributes, as well as for her own filmmaking.

But once you get past the Yoko Ono-ish opening track of her debut CD -- a sung number that rubbed me the wrong way -- July proves to be a skillful idiosyncratic performer in her own right. Her frenetic, absurdist monologues are marked by a deft rhythmic delivery that brings to mind a one-woman Firesign Theatre. In one piece she segues from a stripper talking to a curious customer ("Do you want me to take my shirt off now?") to a girl trying to send a package "book rate," from a mother's warning to her child ("If you don't stop driving you're going to end up armless and legless") back to the stripper ("Did you want me to bend over or anything, sir?"). Which leaves her somewhere between Karen Finley and Maggie Estep -- not such a bad place to be.

(Miranda July performs this Friday, September 26, at Ryles, and opens for the Dub Narcotic Sound System at an afternoon show downstairs at the Middle East this Saturday, September 27. Call Ryles at 876-9330 and the Middle East at 864-EAST.)

-- Matt Ashare