FEATURE:
A Buyer’s Guide
Part Eighty: Marissa Nadler
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LIKE last time out with Def Leppard…
I cannot find a book relating to Marissa Nadler. Even so, I am recommending the four essential albums from the Massachusetts-based artist. With music that spans traditional Folk, Gothic Americana, and Dream Pop, there are also elements of Black Metal. It is a rare and original blend that is captivating! Before getting to those albums, an underrated gem and her latest studio album, here is some biography from AllMusic:
“American singer/songwriter Marissa Nadler blends traditional folk, Gothic Americana, dreamy pop, and noir-ish rock into an original musical framework. Her music is idiosyncratic, bearing a unique and imposing signature for its sparseness and interiority, yet it opens onto haunted vistas embraced by fans of genres ranging from indie folk to black metal. While her first two albums were celebrated for their skeletal instrumentation, it was 2007's Songs III: Bird on the Water that put her on the global map and drew the attention of musicians ranging from black metallers Xasthur to indie rockers Xiu Xiu. Her 2016 album Strangers represented an expansion of her songwriting as it moved away from primarily first-person confessional narratives to character-driven, episodic tomes. Meanwhile, she further tipped the balance from acoustic to more electric components including guitars and atmospheric synths for 2021's self-produced The Path of the Clouds, which included contributions from members of Mercury Rev, Black Mountain, and Lost Horizons.
Raised in a small town in Massachusetts, Nadler took to painting first, a passion she continues to indulge, but her love of music drove her to become a proficient guitarist and songwriter. Her first two albums, Ballads of Living and Dying (2004, Eclipse) and The Saga of Mayflower May (2005, Eclipse) were largely acoustic affairs that featured her mezzo-soprano voice and guitar accompanied by banjo, bells, and penny whistle. On Songs III: Bird on the Water (2007, Peacefrog, Kemado), synthesizers were used for the first time, as were strings and harp. With 2009's Little Hells, the songwriter began opening up her sound to include percussion, pianos, Wurlitzer, and standard rock instrumentation. She toured almost constantly and garnered global acclaim for her recordings and performing. In 2010, she threw fans a curveball by appearing as the vocal chorus on Portal of Sorrow, from one-man black metal band Xasthur. Surprisingly, she was dropped by Kemado/Mexican Summer. Undaunted, she launched a successful crowd-funding campaign for her next recording.
In the early spring of 2011, Nadler released "Baby I Will Leave You in the Morning," the first single and video from the fan-funded, self-titled album; it was released in June on her Box of Cedar Records. Nadler issued a follow-up to her critically lauded eponymous album, The Sister, in May of 2012. Its arrangements dovetailed with those of its predecessor. Signing with Sacred Bones (distributed by Bella Union), Nadler issued the album July in February 2014, marking her first collaboration with engineer/producer Randall Dunn. It featured studio appearances from Eyvind Kang, Phil Wandscher, among others, and hit the Top 20 of the Billboard folk and Heatseekers charts.
She and Dunn then collaborated again on Strangers. Here, Nadler stepped out from writing mostly autobiographical songs and penned more character-driven narratives. The finished album appeared in May 2016. Throughout her 2017 tour of America, Nadler began writing numerous tracks centered on the tension that distance creates in relationships; although she penned three times the amount needed for a new record, most of the demos never came to light. Instead, she opted to write more concise tracks on the same theme, all in the week before heading into the studio. During her time at the House of Lux studio in Laurel Canyon, Nadler chose to work with accomplished female musicians -- bar one male saxophonist -- throughout the recording process, including such notable guests as Sharon Van Etten, Angel Olsen, and harpist Mary Lattimore. The resulting album, For My Crimes, arrived in September 2018 and hit number 24 on Billboard's Top Heatseekers Albums chart. Nadler returned in April 2019 with Droneflower, a collaboration with singer/songwriter Stephen Brodsky.
Following a third covers album, a set of demos (Unearthed), and an ambient album (moons), all self-released in 2020, her next solo album, the collaborative The Path of the Clouds, arrived on Sacred Bones in October 2021. Self-produced, it vastly increased the presence of electric components including distorted guitars and synths. Among its contributors were Lattimore, Bella Union label-runner Simon Raymonde (Cocteau Twins, Lost Horizons), Jesse Chandler (Mercury Rev, Midlake), and Amber Webber (Black Mountain, Lightning Dust)”.
In order to emphasis the brilliance of Marissa Nadler, I have narrowed down her discography to four essential albums you’ll want to own, an underrated record of hers, in addition to her latest release. If you need a guide to the spectacular Nadler, I hope my guides…
STEERS you right.
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The Four Essential Albums
Ballads of Living and Dying
Release Date: 2004
Label: Eclipse
Producer: Myles Baer
Standout Tracks: Hay Tantos Muertos/Undertaker/Days of Rum
Buy: https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=67608&ev=mb
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/1yPt3ErRIeD7dAqKIRzAUA?si=bFcqZyOSQFScoJAsFo0fBg
Review:
“Nadler is clearly savvy enough in her material to know that a true collection of ballads must include a body count, and the most obviously successful auld school example here is her arrangement of Edgar Allen Poe's poem "Annabelle Lee". As you might recall from junior high English, this is a classic tale of ill-starred love with a stretched-by-your-grave finale that fits the ballad form to perfection, and Nadler's melodic rendition here is flawless. And poor Annabelle Lee is not this album's only casualty; there's also "Virginia", which respectfully chronicles the death of Virginia Woolf, as well as dreamier, more ambiguous songs like "Undertaker" and "Box of Cedar" which certainly contain whispers of foreboding for their subjects.
Each song on the album comes lightly-dressed, usually borne along by little more than Nadler's voice, her fingerpicked guitars, and ornamental flourishes from the occasional accordion, autoharp, or blurry wisp of feedback. On "Hay Tantos Muertos", one the album's loveliest tracks, Nadler branches out from the strict balladic format, quoting lines from Pablo Neruda's haunting "No Hay Olvido" ("There Is No Forgetting") in a manner resembling a traditional Portuguese fado, and on "Days of Rum" she busts out a banjo and takes an enchanting turn at a Dock Boggs-style country blues.
It's worth noting that, aside from the Poe and Neruda quotes, all of these songs are original compositions rather than the traditional works they appear. Throughout the album Nadler writes and performs with a weathered maturity that belies her young age. In fact, several tracks ("Mayflower May", "Days of Rum", "Fifty-Five Falls") seem to be narrated from the perspective of older women looking back upon the adventures and mistakes of their youth. Also an accomplished visual artist, Nadler's lyrics showcase a perceptive eye and a genuine empathy for her creations; and when coupled with that intoxicating voice the resulting landscape is one you may want to get lost in for a century or two” – Pitchfork
Choice Cut: Annabelle Lee
Songs III: Bird on the Water
Release Date: 12th March, 2007 (Europe)/12th August, 2007 (U.S.)
Labels: Peacefrog Records/Kemado Records
Producers: Greg Weeks/Marissa Nadler
Standout Tracks: Diamond Heart/Silvia/Feathers
Buy: https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=67615&ev=mb
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/5Hij7PrKCR3aqxyhuYjFAI?si=UvpCMJlbSniEsJ879RLxZw
Review:
“On Song III, Nadler ups the ante. These songs may have been written in her bedsit, but they are executed on this disc with the kind tiny grandeur they deserve. In some ways, listening to Nadler is akin to listening to Tom Rapp of Pearls Before Swine (she covered a track of theirs on a compilation disc a while back). There is a directness to her delivery and she never flinches from her material, yet she sounds out of this time and space at the same moment. Recorded by Greg Weeks in Philadelphia, Nadler surrounds herself with a small group of very attentive and sympathetic musicians. Weeks plays synth and distorted lead guitar parts; Helena Espvall sits at the cello; Orion Rigel Dommisse appears on mandolin and harp; and Otto Hauser lends a hand on percussion. At the center of every song is Nadler's guitar playing: fingerpicked, rhythmic, and full of a kind of forward movement that sometimes stands at delightful odds with the timelessness of her lyrics and singing voice.
On this 11-song set, ten are originals, and the lone cover is daunting: Leonard Cohen's "Famous Blue Raincoat," which adds new meaning to the songwriter's words and even Jennifer Warnes' excellent interpretation. The standout tracks -- though all are excellent, deeply moving and emotionally taut -- are "Feathers," "Diamond Heart," "Silvia," and "Mexican Summer." They talk of loss, death, grief, the brokenness in love, transgression, and the appearance of being able to move freely among these very strong emotions while becoming so informed by them: her world view and her heart's view are not only informed by them, but inseparable from them. Nadler has written a song suite here that fully articulates her strongest gifts: she never has to reach for notes, only to open her mouth and they pour like honey, slowly, purposefully, and look at the smaller entrances where her imaginative narratives enter the human being and root themselves there for lifetimes. There are no seams in this album, and to quote her lyric poetry out of the context from the music would be an injustice.
Song III is not to be compared with any of the recordings of her contemporaries. She falls for none of the traps, she communicates with a kind of gentle candor that is unsettling, elegant, and utterly graceful. This is music that is violent in its ability to shift the listener's attention toward it, but it is delivered gently, slowly, and purposefully. For those who have been seduced by the works of Buffy Sainte-Marie's Illuminations album, Tom Rapp's later solo work, the recordings of Bill Fay, late Current 93, Antony, Michael Cashmore, Leonard Cohen's early material, or the middle period records of Pearls Before Swine, this is certainly for you. For anyone looking for early Joni Mitchell or Joanna Newsom, search elsewhere. Disturbing, beautiful and unforgettable, Song III: Bird on the Water is among the most arresting recordings of 2007 thus far and sets a new high-water mark for this seemingly limitless songwriter. [The purchase of the CD comes with a coupon for an Internet download -- in 192 kps, MP3, or FLAC -- for an additional four-song EP which includes a stunning reading of Neil Young's "Cortez the Killer."]” – AllMusic
Choice Cut: Mexican Summer
Marissa Nadler
Release Date: 14th June, 2011
Label: Box of Cedar
Producer: Brian McTear
Standout Tracks: Alabaster Queen/Baby I Will Leave You in the Morning/Wedding
Buy: https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=340734&ev=mb
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/0KlPu0R6HPLeApYeX6iMfP?si=V15zX_sJSQyBUR3KCrDpRA
Review:
“Puppet Master", the sixth song on the new album by Marissa Nadler, opens as a lonely country shuffle. Over a muted beat and a quiet circular guitar line, Nadler again pines for a lover who's left, something she's done about as well as any young American songwriter during the last decade. "Cobalt and sea, come back to me," she sings, her loneliness delivered like a ghost's whisper. "I'll never do you wrong." But 90 seconds in, "Puppet Master" takes an unexpected turn, adding vibraphone and transitioning to a near-waltz that suggests the Ronnettes, just slowed and simplified. Nadler's experience sublimates into a puppet's innocence: "Lately, all I want is you," she offers, sweetly and almost cheerily. "Puppet master, see me through."
Nadler volleys between mourning and flirting on "Puppet Master", the centerpiece of her first album for own label, Box of Cedar. It's a telling move, too: Her looks at love have grown increasingly intricate, subtle and-- most importantly-- realistic since her 2004 debut. Her songs are now much too considered to be only elegiac, too complex to be simply sad. That idea translates musically as well. Just like "Puppet Master", the best songs here make slight and unexpected detours. With the help of producer Brian McTear, the songs fit together naturally; whether above synthesizers or acoustic guitar, Nadler never sounds forced. "In Your Lair, Bear", for instance, is an opening masterstroke, a bold six-minute move that patiently rises over its duration. Drums, strings, electric guitars, and harmonies enter and exit in turn; Nadler's two characters use each other, seasonally wearing one another like amulets or accessories. "I took you home, and I crashed you," she sings at the end, subverting her general role as the one demolished by love. She assumes the power just to admit she's abused it.
Nadler's songs are frank, careful examinations of all the ways a relationship can grow cold. Her music sounds as somber as ever here, and her distant air remains one of the most absolutely haunting things you're likely to find anywhere near indie rock. But she's grown past solipsism to become more of a reporter on the battles she's seen. During "Alabaster Queen", she admits giving over to a someone who is nothing but trouble, excusing the "women wistful wanting" with a deliberateness that foretells how badly this will all end. For the emotional minefield "Baby I Will Leave You in the Morning", Nadler's protagonist preemptively asks for forgiveness before she hits the road, where she'll drink to sleep-- most likely, with another lover. She doesn't blame the despair of the gorgeously pained "Wind Up Doll" on the dead husband, and she doesn't badmouth the lover who doesn't reciprocate her eternal, exhausting feelings during "Wedding". She just shares those stories in songs that are as gorgeous as they are elliptical and intriguing.
Nadler's diligently expanded her reach as a writer and arranger during the past decade, culminating so far in the expansive sounds of 2009's Little Hells and the subtly twisting forms of this new eponymous album. But she's part of that caste of American songwriters who don't make music grand enough to be Joanna Newsom or Bon Iver, brazen enough to be Fleet Foxes. Rather, her contemporaries might be considered Richard Buckner, Doug Paisley, Alela Diane, and Bill Callahan-- really good songwriters who can get lost in the current indie climate, or, as Mike Powell wrote about Callahan earlier this year, folks who might "have nothing to add to the general conversation about music in 2011." These are writers sitting on terrific strings of records, yet remaining relatively unnoticed. Once again, though, Nadler has maintained and etched out yet another album of cold, stony truths about the ways we love, or fail to” – Pitchfork
Choice Cut: Puppet Master
July
Release Date: 10th February, 2014
Labels: Bella Union/Sacred Bones Records
Producer: Randall Dunn
Standout Tracks: 1923/We Are Coming Back/Desire
Buy: https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=649338&ev=mb
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/329OjHQcoqyK6v8z5XeEMw?si=MYkxQqyeT2-jVRnUir3F7g
Review:
“Breakup albums aren’t typically joyful affairs. Add the always melancholy Marissa Nadler to the equation and you have a pity party waiting to happen.
That’s not to undermine the sheer eerie beauty of these sad songs. Her singing is so honest, restrained and touching, it’s impossible to imagine she recorded them without shedding a few tears. Hearing her forlorn soprano repeat “baby come back to me” against solemn strings, ghostly percussion and barely strummed guitar on “1923” is an emotionally draining but somehow cathartic experience.
As is the entire album. It digs into a moody blue groove early and rides that for 45 minutes of languid, blissful music, based in folk, but with strains of atmospheric country, sighing pop and an approach that combines the most ethereal aspects of the Cowboy Junkies and Mazzy Star. Nadler titles a song “Was it a Dream” which is what you’ll be wondering after this eleven track set winds its way to an end. Initially the tunes seem to melt into each other, but repeated spins reveal individual melodies that are wistful yet haunted and stick with you long after the final track is over.
Gloomy yet never glum, Nadler often overdubs her bittersweet voice, adding to the stark piano and guitar that underscore these heartbreaking and occasionally angry tunes. Those who need a soundtrack for a rainy night alone can take comfort in the pure reflective intimacy of this alluring and frequently enchanting album” – American Songwriter
Choice Cut: Was It a Dream
The Underrated Gem
For My Crimes
Release Date: 28th September, 2018
Labels: Sacred Bones (U.S.)/Bella Union (U.K.)
Producers: Marissa Nadler/Justin Raisen/Lawrence Rothman
Standout Tracks: For My Crimes/Blue Vapor/Flame Thrower
Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/marissa-nadler/for-my-crimes
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/6ypJE6tqKXC2kkgGbrVjo1?si=2aHnLka2TWOMbLCy7JBTrg
Review:
“For My Crimes is a folk album, but it sees her bend the idiom to her will almost totally, to the point that ‘country’ or ‘folk’ feel like fairly abstract terms - there is just Marissa Nadler. If it lacks some of the obvious sonic punch of her other records then there’s subtler recompense. There are richly sepia strings artfully performed and arranged by Janel Leppin. There is immaculate production from Nadler, Lawrence Rothman and Justin Raisen that gives most songs and elegiac, wintry lustre but is also versatile enough to sees a close mic’d acoustic take on a metallic intensity on ‘Blue Vapor’, which builds to a thunderous full-band crescendo. And there’s a few celebrity friends on backing vocals. Angel Olsen, Sharon van Etten and Kristin Kontrol all pop up, albeit in fairly discrete form – everything feels subsumed by Nadler (you hear a backing vocal, odds are it’s a famous person). And a lot of hooks: ‘I Can’t Listen To Gene Clark Anymore’, ‘Blue Vapour’, ‘Dream Dream Big in the Sky’ and ‘You’re Only Harmless When You Dream’ all have huge, dreamy, ’50s sorta melodies.
Perhaps ‘For My Crimes’s real signature is the lyrics. I’m always going to have a softer spot for Nadler singing gothy songs about people dying. But there is a real impressive growth and maturity to her lyrical depictions here of doomed, mutually dependent, mutually destructive relationships (or perhaps it’s a concept album about a single relationship – the possibility is left open).
She borrows a fair amount from country: ‘Interlocking’ sees her talking about how "trouble's been followin’ me"; focus on the words and ‘All Out of Catastrophes’ is quite jovial, an almost funny song about the failure of a relationship ("In your sleep you called me Natalie - it was the nicest thing you said"), but she sounds almost nothing like the musicians she’s nodding to: they’re totally subverted by her wraithlike earnestness and the glistening dark spaces between the notes
And some time she just nails it with a perfectly lyric - in context, "you’re only harmless when you sleep" feel less about an abusive relationship than a painful one, but the chorus feels remarkably weighted with painful meaning.
This is not the best Marissa Nadler record, but it kind of feels like her most perfect, potentially the resolution of a subtle identity crisis that’s run through her music over the years. It’s almost hard to imagine what she’ll do next having arrived here. But the next destination is her problem – for now we have another immaculately dark stop upon the journey” – Drowned in Sound
Choice Cut: I Can't Listen to Gene Clark Anymore (ft. Sharon Van Etten)
The Latest Album
The Path of the Clouds
Release Date: 29th October, 2021
Label: Sacred Bones Records
Standout Tracks: Bessie Did You Make It?/The Path of the Clouds/Lemon Queen
Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/marissa-nadler/the-path-of-the-clouds
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/5fIdNvEpra5JdAAIEEJRPz?si=x69-66W9TPW0da8eSqMLdQ
Review:
“As a child, Marissa Nadler was obsessed with Unsolved Mysteries. From 1987, the documentary series originally ran for almost 20 years and 600 episodes, focusing on strange cases of sudden disappearances. Those stories, of forgotten people and lives cut short, found their way back into Nadler’s life during the last 18 months – stuck at home during the pandemic, she dove headfirst into these other worlds that offered an escape from her own.
The result is the prolific singer-songwriter’s ninth album ‘The Path of the Clouds’, a record at once expansive and surprising lyrically and melodically. She nods to 1928 wilderness explorers Bessie and Glen Hyde on transportive opener ‘Bessie Did You Make It’, and pays homage to 1971 plane hijacker D.B. Cooper on the title track – yet there’s no twitchy interrogation of what he did or did not do; she uses the space instead to offer a salient meditation on what it means to take control of your own destiny.
Yet fiction doesn’t swallow us whole, with Nadler’s forthright vision for her own evolution as an artist still ambitious – all 11 tracks here are self-produced, and she’s enlisted collaborators including cosmic harp player Mary Lattimore, Mercury Rev member Jesse Chandler and multi-instrumentalist Milky Burgess (a recent contributor on the atmospheric score for Panos Cosmatos’ psychedelic horror Mandy).
There’s a determination with her new collaborators to move beyond the “ethereal” and “haunting” epithets that have followed Nadler for the last two decades, particularly felt here in the seductive bassline of ‘If I Could Breath Underwater’ and in defiant, menacing chords (yet it wouldn’t be Nadler at her best without delicate fingerpicking elsewhere too) on ‘Couldn’t Have Done The Killing’.
‘Elegy’ stands out for its quiet devastation, with Lattimore’s work elevating the ghostly into something altogether spellbinding, while the romance of ‘Lemon Queen’ swells with a distinct lack of reverb on Nadler’s voice and the warm twang of shimmering strings closing the album on a cinematic, mournful note. “Taller and taller / Over you,” she sings, leaving the question hanging in the air as to whether or not the person she’s speaking to is still in a place to hear this” – NME
Choice Cut: Elegy