Sub Pop Records
All Access Rating: A
 |
| Sarah Silverman - We Are Miracles 2014 |
Just when the brilliant comic Sarah Silverman has buttered an audience up with some charming little story about her Jewish childhood, growing up in New Hampshire, she drops the hammer, delivering a shockingly funny and incisive punchline about rape jokes – she's not a fan, by the way – or religion that feels like a knife in the gut.
And after she's done twisting it, she smiles as if to say, "Sorry," even though she doesn't really mean it. Because she will do it again ... and again and again and again.
We Are Miracles is a audio recording, released by Sub Pop Records, of Silverman's first headline special for HBO, a fearless and hysterical performance that earned her an Emmy nomination. Eschewing political correctness for blunt honesty, Silverman starts by talking about how she incorporates watching internet porn on her phone into her "Nightly Rituals" and what strange key words she uses, before calling into question the sanity of some deeply held religious beliefs of Christians and Scientology – Silverman remarking how strange it seems that some would choose to follow a guy named Ron – that require an almost superhuman leap of faith.
Even when addressing uncomfortable subjects, such as bed-wetting into her teens and the futility of vaginal deodorants in dealing with what she says is women's greatest insecurity, "smelly vagina," Silverman elicits howls of laughter, her uncanny ability to spool out multi-layered jokes in stages to save the biggest reveal for last being just one of many qualities that make her, as Rolling Stone said, "the most outrageously funny woman alive."
More than that, however, Silverman is fiercely intelligent and disarmingly empathetic, especially when it comes to discussing insecurities and how they manifest themselves in ridiculous female and male behavior. Like the best comedians, Silverman is eviscerating in her social commentary, but there is a deep-seated concern for humanity and feminine empowerment hidden inside the racy, caustic humor.
A multi-talented actress who's worked alongside John C. Reilly in the animated kids' film "Wreck It Ralph," made memorable appearances in critically acclaimed TV shows "The Good Wife" and "Monk" and taken the Comedy Central series "The Sarah Silverman Show" to places TV feared to tread, Silverman is in her element onstage. Oh Sarah, you are, indeed, incorrigible.
– Peter Lindblad
