Marissa Nadler - Along the Path of the Clouds

Among the new damsels of post-2000 folk, Marissa Nadler stands out for at least three qualities. The voice, first of all: a crystalline mezzo-soprano, yet one capable of fitting perfectly into her pitch-dark musical textures. Then, a "classic" attitude, which gives her a greater sense of measure compared to the muddled "avant" ambitions of other exponents of the genre. Finally, a peculiar talent, almost Cohen-esque in nature, for drawing gorgeous melodic openings within spare sonic landscapes. The singer-songwriter born in Washington has thus managed to stand apart from the horde of girls with guitars that continues to flood the independent market to this day. Credit goes to a formidable run of albums that we can already safely count among the finest works of female singer-songwriting of these two post-2000 decades.

In perpetual migration – from New York to Boston, up to her current home in Nashville – Marissa Nadler lives in her own time, yet with an ancient soul, as if she were the reincarnation of a Romantic heroine from the 19th century or some siren out of the mystic Sixties (Nico?). A lovely oval face, framed by long black hair, diaphanous skin and delicate movements, she wanders the frozen woods of her songs like a restless ghost. Wintry songs, indeed, that bring to mind Leonard Cohen's "Songs Of Love And Hate" or Nick Cave's "Murder Ballads" for their exploration of the darkest, most desolate recesses of the human soul. But, looking closer, the heart of her music must be sought even further back in time: in the tradition of Appalachian storytellers, in Celtic and Provençal folk, in the ancient Portuguese school of fado (the comparison with Teresa Salgueiro of Madredeus is not so unfounded), and in an eternal psychedelia that swings between the roaring Sixties and the dreamy languor of Hope Sandoval.

Pressed in just 550 copies by Empire Records, a small Arizona label, the debut album Ballads Of Living And Dying (2004) is a collection of "songs of love and death" written by Nadler herself, save for two literary homages, to Edgar Allan Poe (the tale of doomed love "Annabelle Lee") and Pablo Neruda (a fado-flavored revisiting of "Hay Tantos Muertos", with an evocative organ accompaniment).

The ballad format regains its primal meaning here: no longer a simple "slow number" or any old sentimental tune, but a small dramatic poem, set to music in the manner of the ancient bards, with circular structures, catchy rhymes and spare arrangements as backdrop. Marissa Nadler's voice floats ethereally, punctuated only by her fingerpicking (guitars, banjo and ukulele) and the shadowy rustle of strings.

The opening "55 Falls" opens the gates of this arcane village over the chilling notes of a slide guitar, "Mayflower May" leads down a desolate country path, crowded with ghosts and unsettling silences, "Days Of Rum" takes on an old-school country-blues, plucked on banjo strings, while "Virginia" is a funereal portrait of Wolf. The only rays of sunlight filter through the rough-hewn textures of "Box Of Cedar", a sort of celebration of life in the middle of a requiem ("I'm going to tell everybody that I'm glad to see you, even though you're coming home in a box of cedar"). And the other murder ballad, "Bed Of Solid Stone" (a title that says it all…), closes the record in the only way possible.

A fascinating hybrid of sepulchral, Bert Jansch-style folk and hypnotic psychedelia, Ballads Of Living And Dying is a debut of extraordinary maturity for a 23-year-old, the ideal calling card for entering the pantheon of the new century's folksingers.

Just one year later came The Saga Of Mayflower May, another eleven sketches of bare, enchanting folk. The overture of "Under An Old Umbrella" is downright moving: Nadler's insistent fingerpicking provides the backdrop for a dirge of infinite sorrow, the kind that tears your heart apart. And when the flute (courtesy of Nick Castro) enters to accompany the other splendid medieval litany, "The Little Famous Song", the listener is well and truly floored, spellbound by this siren who sings like a 13th-century Provençal damsel, with a grace and melodiousness that feel otherworldly.

On "Mr. John Lee", Marissa drops to a slightly lower register, declaiming with the bearing of a blues singer another tale of love irretrievably lost. The strumming of "Yellow Lights" preludes another elegant ballad, where sadness takes on the red of rubies and blood ("drinking rubies in the rain"… "red the blood inside the old tree"), the green of meadows ("green the colour of the grasses") and the colors of eyes ("Oh, Mary, don't you die/ Cause of the color of her eyes").

The saga of Mayflower May continues like an unbroken dream, which languishes over the piano tears of "Old Love Haunts Me In the Morning" (another gorgeous melody sealing an ode to love and death) and the delights of fingerpicking, this time leaning more toward American folk-country, on "In The Time Of The Lorry Low" and "Calico", or the angelic choirs and vocal inlays of "Horses And Their Kin", which closes the album in full ecstatic trance.

Marissa Nadler speaks the language of a universal folk, ranging from Joni Mitchell to that forgotten angel of Breton folk named Veronique Chalot. Cohen's muse (and, indirectly, Cave's) instead dominates on the lyrical side, as elegiac and delicate as it is darkly gothic.

Even more profound and touching than its predecessor, The Saga Of Mayflower May is a record to be kept in a treasure chest, like a precious old jewel.

For her third album in four years, Songs III: Bird On The Water (2007), Marissa Nadler was able to benefit from the backing of a new label, the UK's Peacefrog, and the production of Greg Weeks, along with the participation of two other Espers musicians, Jesse Sparhawk (mandolin, harp) and Otto Hauser (percussion).

Working with cello, guitar and synth around her crystalline mezzo-soprano, the graceful damsel from Massachusetts above all confirms her growth as a musician and singer. And the enormous evocative power of a ghostly voice that seems to come from another age altogether remains intact. The skeleton of her icy ghost ballads is unchanged, but the arrangements are now less bare, with a bit of electric guitar distortion beefing up the sound.

Compared to The Saga of Mayflower May, however, the melodic framework feels weaker: gone are those radiant openings that floored the listener in spine-tingling madrigals like "Under An Old Umbrella" or "Famous Song", and at times Marissa indulges in one affectation too many. Paradoxically, it is precisely her newfound awareness of her own abilities that seems to have reined in her songwriting, dulling the almost "primordial" pathos that once pervaded it.

But class will out, and the psychedelic glimmers of “Mexican Summer”, suspended between Calexico and Mazzy Star, along with the hushed palpitations of “Dying Breed”, are enough to outclass swarms of balladeers in skirts (and otherwise). Then there's the modern folksinger, who flirts with electronics (the dazed keyboards of “Bird On Your Grave”) and with angular guitars (“Rachel”), without giving up her classic Joan Baez-style inflection (the single “Diamond Heart”, perhaps the best ballad of the bunch). And the guiding spirit of Cohen lives on too, cast in even darker tones on the cover of “Famous Blue Raincoat”. The rest, however, remains trapped under glass, with few sparks and a lot of craftsmanship.

Marissa Nadler's gothic, mesmeric lyricism still captivates, but it doesn't fully come into its own on her third effort. Still, if it helps introduce the world to the talent of this enchanting siren, Songs III: Bird On The Water will be anything but a wasted record.

Continuing down the road opened up by Songs III: Bird On The Water and having abandoned the dusty folk-revival caravan, on Little Hells, her fourth album in five years, the Washington singer-songwriter turns her gaze towards the placid, dreamy shores of dream-pop and a psychedelic pop in the vein of Mazzy Star, without cutting ties to her roots, still firmly planted on the slopes of the Appalachians.

For the occasion, a supercast comes together under the aegis of her new label, New York's Kemado. At the controls, Chris Coady (Cat Power, Tv On The Radio, Blonde Redhead, !!!) and "Farmer" Dave Scher (a collaborator of Elvis Costello and Interpol), while Simone Pace, drummer of Blonde Redhead, joins the faithful Myles Baer aka Black Hole Infinity. The result is richer arrangements, charged with electronics and a sturdier rhythm section. Nothing feels tacked-on, though: the new sound works, even if at times it ends up sacrificing a bit of the fingerpicking at which Marissa is famously so skilled.

The extreme destination of this new deal is the whirling "Mary Comes Alive", where a drum machine pattern dictates an obsessive cadence, over which an insistent guitar progression and a synth line are grafted. Such a dense framework, however, doesn't undermine Nadler's performance, as she grapples with another moving reflection on the seasons of love and life. The single "River Of Dirt" likewise rests on a polished rhythm section, with powerful drumming and a driving bass riff bolstering the ethereal tones of her singing, while the closing "Mistress" sounds almost cheerful in its country gait.

Marissa breathes glass-spun words into the music-box thrill of "Heart Paper Lover", pines away in the gossamer lullaby of "Brittle Crushed And Torn", and balances the requiem of "The Whole Is Wide" on two piano notes. Her voice remains the primary instrument, able to change a song's whole complexion with a single sigh. And so sometimes even the barest of trappings is enough, as on the title track, a portrait of a heart in pieces painted on a dream-country canvas, or in the insistent arpeggio of "Ghosts And Lovers", a desolate litany with its heart in its throat.

The "atmospheric" qualities of Nadler's sound resurface above all in the swirl of "Loner", where a sepulchral organ holds the reins.

If we had to single out the track that best distills all these ideas, the choice would fall on "Rosary", a waltz of seductive beauty, cradled in the reverb of a slide guitar and enchanted vocal melodies.

Marissa Nadler has by now broadened her sonic range, honing her songwriting with a sophisticated elegance that only occasionally undercuts the raw visceral quality of her approach, even if the formal and emotional heights of The Saga Of Mayflower May remain out of reach. The storytelling of this noir-tinged poet, influenced by Edgar Allan Poe and the darkest undercurrents of the Victorian age, once again proves its worth.

In 2011 the Washington singer-songwriter returns with a self-produced album, largely crowdfunded by her own fans, the self-titled Marissa Nadler. She takes the opportunity to shed, at least in part, some of her defining traits, from her steady, contrapuntal fingerpicking to the mythological, heavily allegorical breath of her lyrics.

Marissa thus takes the considerable risk of disappointing her own longtime fans, the very ones who backed the making of this record, which the artist herself describes as an evolution of her style. Perhaps for this reason, Marissa Nadler is the album that took the longest to write and produce in her career.

Something of this need to broaden her expressive range was already noticeable with Little Hells. The 2009 record already contained some of the variations on display here, but it likely still retained that unsettling gothic charm, the dream of ghosts in love that drew in Nadler's listeners.

On Marissa Nadler, by contrast, the rough edges vanish in favor of polished country-pop numbers with (all too) self-explanatory titles ("The Sun Always Reminds Of You", "Puppet Master", "In A Magazine"), even venturing into the dreamy sentimental melodrama of Julee Cruise's "Baby, I Will Leave You In The Morning" or the psychedelic waltz of the graveyard wedding in "Wedding" (revisited in a sparer form on "Alabaster Queen").

Still, her many admirers can take comfort in finding, beyond the numerous tracks that bear Nadler's trademark sound (the lovely "In Your Lair, Bear", "Little King", the reprise of "Mr John Lee Revisited" from The Saga Of Mayflower May, "Wind Up Doll"), that her class remains intact, especially in her now-familiar vocal artistry, which alone may be enough to elevate the not always brilliant compositional fabric of Marissa Nadler.

In short, there isn't much to fear in this listen, but not much to particularly cherish either, on a record where fiction — not just in the lyrics — no longer seems to be the focal point of Marissa Nadler's artistic expression.

Having tossed aside the muddled experimental ambitions and the more layered arrangements of her recent records, on The Sister (2012) the Washington singer-songwriter goes back to doing what she does best. The result is an enchantment reawakened from the darkness of the icy, spectral woods where her music has always dwelled. Mesmerizing, utterly irresistible vocalizing, paired almost exclusively with the unnatural grace of her fingerpicking. And, at last, new melodies of real pedigree, the kind that pour out of her fluid and unstoppable, as if she were in a trance, possessed by some ancestral, unsettling muse.

No more synthetic trappings, as on the previous self-titled album and on Little Hells: almost always, the only company is her voice, lost in the wind and almost unnatural, with its spectral, gothic shadings. A spell that begins right from the opening, aching "The Wrecking Ball Company" and continues through the frozen, stunning melody of "Love Again, There Is A Fire", chiseled around dreamlike choruses and the hypnotic allure of Nadler's voice. It takes very little to conjure the magic, as among the shadowy paths of "Christine", another skeletal litany, barely thickened by supporting male vocals. While "Apostle" showcases above all Marissa's now-considerable skill in the art of fingerpicking, the tale of "Constantine", the former rock star wrecked by codeine, still takes the shape of a timeless ballad, made of languor and suspended pain.

The slight dip in the closing stretch doesn't undermine the outcome of a precious record, probably the best Nadler has made since the days of the Mayflower May saga, proof of a talent that her last few minor efforts had only momentarily dimmed.

Like a siren bound by a curse, Marissa is compelled to rediscover simplicity and humility in order to bring her magic back to life.

Time, in any case, is a gentleman, and Marissa Nadler finally begins to receive the recognition she has always deserved. By the mid-2010s, she is by now an artist of acknowledged international stature, as shown by the attention of the world's leading outlets, a string of prestigious collaborations and, not least, the double record-label backing of her new album, July (2014): Sacred Bones (the label behind Crystal Stilts, Zola Jesus and Case Studies) for the US, and a songwriting institution like Bella Union for Europe.

If on the previous record Marissa had seemed almost forced to rediscover simplicity and humility in order to bring her magic back to life, on her new album, helped along by production from doomer Randall Dunn (Earth, Sunn O))), Wolves In The Throne Room), it's precisely the tracks with the richest arrangements that stand out. Starting with the gorgeous single "Dead City Emily", where Steve Moore's sinister, sloshing synths merge with the echoes of electric guitar in a ghostly, suffocating atmosphere, with Nadler's trademark reverb-drenched vocals almost swallowed up in the mix.

It's as if the grandiloquent power of Sunn O)))'s metallic landscapes had dissolved into a haze of fragile harmonic textures, as on the album's other triumph, the heart-wrenching "Was It A Dream", where a bewildered Nadler questions the end of a relationship while strings swell the pathos and a lacerating electric guitar scars a tender melody. This renewed versatility of arrangement also enriches the piano interlude of "I've Got Your Name" and the following "Desire", where an obsessive guitar and Marissa's mesmeric vocals weave into the flow of keyboards for a new romance of love and claims. Just as heartfelt, and equally diaphanous, is the chant of "Anyone Else", resting on an insistent drone, in a play of light and shadow sharpened by the intensity of the backing vocals.

Where she dares, then, Nadler doesn't lose her bearings. But hers remains a classic, traditional folk framework, with her signature wintry vignettes as its trademark. So the ghosts reappear among the skeletons of bare, frozen trees in "1923", a chamber piece, with the tremor of Eyvind Kang's strings, Phil Wandscher's treated guitar and a distant drum sustaining a litany lost in the wind. And once again we savor the delight of never-banal fingerpicking, a natural foundation for Nadler's vocal harmonizations, now almost whispered in an atypical spoken-word turn ("Holiday In"), now supported by elegant organ and pedal-steel arrangements, as on the opening "Drive", a painful crucible of memories and sensations. These are acrobatics performed on a very thin wire, and they don't always come off fully (the country-flavored celebration of summers and "Independence Days" in "Firecrackers", the slightly phoned-in dirge of "We Are Coming Back", the understated piano farewell of "Nothing In My Heart"). But there always remains that pleasant sense of disorientation that ensnares, like a siren's song, anyone navigating the grooves of Nadler's discography.

Why fix what isn't broken. So Marissa Nadler reaffirms her apparently unlikely partnership with Dunn on Strangers (2016), her eighth album in 12 years. A work that dares even further, plunging Nadler's crystalline mezzo-soprano into a bubbling magma of processed guitars and reverb, and leaning even more heavily on drumming. To the point that in some cases - perhaps for the first time in her career - one ends up paying more attention to the sounds than to the melodies. Take the solemn march of "Hungry Is The Ghost", with one guitar clattering and another pulsing out the rhythm, gradually joined by synth, pedal steel and piano to soften the roar of the distortion. Or the ghost orchestra of "Katie I Know" - one of the album's most layered and evocative arrangements - where a sturdy rhythm is set against guitar embroidery and soft dream-pop textures brushed in by organ, synth and strings, while Marissa's celestial voice recounts the end of a toxic relationship.

Even the more pastoral episodes appear less diaphanous than before, nonetheless shot through with a subtle but palpable tension: from the crescendo of acoustic chord changes in "Skyscraper" to the funereal horns of "Waking", all the way to the almost western twang that scars the melancholy of "Nothing Feels The Same". The sole exception is perhaps the closing elegy "Dissolve", the track closest to the bare fingerpicking of her early work. But the range of her lyrics also widens, moving from autobiography toward more universal themes such as loneliness and despair, with touches that are even apocalyptic and surreal. The strangers referenced in the title - wounded, disillusioned and alone - are perhaps nothing more than the external projection of the unconscious and the demons of their loving creator.

An album that, overall, sounds catchier too than many of its predecessors. And if a hit were ever to emerge under the name Marissa Nadler, the prime suspect would be "Janie In Love", the album's natural single: another lullaby lost in the wind, with reverb-soaked guitars and dissonant violins cracking the ecstatic rapture of its melody, while Nadler's voice drops into lower tones before the chorus explodes, propped up by a beat more powerful than ever. But the greater richness of the sonic framework doesn't smother Nadler's magnetic vocal presence, light as a sea breeze amid the piano chimes and backing vocals of "Divers In The Dust", more noir and spectral amid the country languor of the title track (with electric guitar and pedal steel to the fore), nor does it compress her melodic gift, ready to blossom again in the ode "All The Colors Of The Dark", which truly condenses every shade of her expressive palette, with an otherworldly, fairy-tale grace: "This is not your world anymore", she proclaims - seemingly addressing herself - within a hypnotic frame of strings and keyboards.

While it's true that the vigor of the guitars and the heavier use of echo and reverb broaden the pathos, the comparison some have drawn with the Lana Del Rey of "Ultraviolence" and thereabouts seems misleading: there's none of that erotic-noir diva carnality, that lascivious, surreal take on the torch-song format.

Marissa doesn't flirt with pop; she stays faithful to the rigid canons of the folksinger and to the gothic vision of her ancestral world. Dunn's input at the console, however, is gradually coaxing her out of her shell of shyness. And who knows — after all the gems she's turned out over this dozen years, maybe the moment has finally come for her to grasp success.

Two years later, with For My Crimes (2018), the American singer-songwriter restores the spectral folk of her early albums; what remains constant, however, is the gallery of female characters populating the eleven tracks, protagonists of stories rich in romance and nostalgia, over which looms the specter of domestic violence. And it's here that Marissa Nadler's writing reveals the subtle evolution that has led the artist from imaginary tales to recounting everyday stories ("Dream Dream Big In The Sky"), this time focusing attention on the difficulties of relationships between men and women ("You're Only Harmless When You Sleep").

True to its title, For My Crimes explores country-gothic-noir sonic territory that at times recalls Laura Fraser and her band Tarnation ("Are You Really Gonna Move To The South?"), but also Hope Sandoval ("All Out Of Catastrophes") and the Cowboy Junkies ("Flamethrower"), while the long list of collaborators (among others Janel Leppin, Mary Lattimore, Eva Gardner, Patty Schemel) adds a few small new touches to the songwriter's repertoire.

It's hard not to notice the slight harmonic revolution that Angel Olsen works on the delightful title track, or the perfect synergy with Sharon Van Etten on "Lover Release Me", and above all the unexpected turn toward electrified folk on "Blue Vapor", the fruit of a collaboration with Kristen Kontrol, singer of Dum Dum Girls, and the precious presence of Dana Colley of Morphine on sax: the only male presence on the entire record. The presence of a trio of songs clearly above standard confirms how right Nadler was to return to the raw, aching folk of her early albums: the poetic candor and lyrical energy of "I Can't Listen To Gene Clark Anymore" invites bold comparisons (Bob Dylan), the shadowy tone of the chords and vocals on "Interlocking" even stirs up the ghost of This Mortal Coil, and, last but not least, the gentle, delicate profile of the autobiographical "Said Goodbye To That Car" ventures a melody so simple yet so effective that it evokes the Beatles' "Blackbird".

After two innovative albums like July and Strangers, Marissa Nadler's new project will strike many as a record without surprises - or perhaps the real surprise lies precisely in the natural, instinctive freshness of eleven songs so ordinary and simple that they go straight to the listener's heart, not without first leaving a faint scratch on the skin.

And even deeper are the scratches Nadler inflicts with the project alongside Stephen Brodsky (Cave In, Mutoid Man, New Idea Society and Old Man Gloom), released in 2019 despite having been conceived years earlier. Droneflower pushes the artistic boundaries of both musicians, developing idioms that are partly uncharted territory for each: the meeting point between Nadler's crystalline mezzo-soprano voice and Brodsky's metal, hardcore and progressive-rock background lies in the darkness and ever-fascinating world of gothic-folk. It's a record born of constant shifts in concept, originally conceived as a potential horror-film soundtrack; of that original idea, only the intensity of the images the music manages to conjure remains.

It almost feels as though the ten songs had already been created in some parallel universe, simply waiting to be captured and revealed to mere mortals — the way a painter captures the poetry of a sunset, unveiling unseen shades of it — so these two musicians' slightly dissonant sonic snapshots renew a sense of wonder and amazement.

A cover of Guns N' Roses' "Estranged" sits proudly at the center of the album's sequence, giving rise to one of its most epic and evocative moments, but it's the minimal, cinematic "Space Ghost I" and "Space Ghost II" that serve as the leitmotif for Droneflower's atmospheres. And it's in these dark spaces that Brodsky engineers some of the most interesting and intriguing musical excursions, first with a series of bittersweet electric-guitar chords on "Watch The Time", then with rough, spectral, mutating chords that blur the perception of the vocal lines, shifting from ethereal, velvety atmospheres toward darker, more ancestral tones. A rougher, more malevolent spirituality takes hold of "For The Sun", with the two musicians dancing over nimble electric chords and howling sonic textures, skillfully balanced between dream and nightmare. A synergy partly echoed in the album's other cover, Morphine's "In Spite Of Me" (with Dana Colley on sax).

What seemed like an offhand side project destined only for Marissa Nadler's most curious fans instead turns out to be a small treasure chest of precious gems; with Brodsky's help, the singer-songwriter uncovered yet another dark side of her complex artistic persona.

After releasing the limited-edition covers album Instead Of Dreaming (2021), capable of ranging with surprising ease from King Crimson to the Bee Gees, from Bob Dylan to America, Marissa Nadler shuts herself away in her new home in Nashville, where she lives through a peculiar lockdown, obsessively drawn to episodes of the docuseries "Unsolved Mysteries", Netflix's reworking of an old TV format that, it turns out, she had devoured as a child.

It's precisely from that forced isolation and that narrative spark that the new album The Path Of The Clouds (2021) is born, on which, for the first time, she composes most of the tracks on piano rather than guitar, surrounded by an interesting cast of guests: from harpist Mary Lattimore to multi-instrumentalist Jesse Chandler (Mercury Rev, Midlake), her piano teacher, from singer-songwriter Emma Ruth Rundle and Amber Webber of Black Mountain to former Cocteau Twins member Simon Raymonde. The result is an ambitious, complex record, though not always as melodically inspired as its predecessors. The American folksinger found in those "unsolved mysteries" the fuel for new obsessive noir ballads, once again suspended between reality and fantasy, past and present. And while the impression is that this time the emphasis has been placed more on the stories than on the songs, it's precisely in this hazy, blurred borderland that the album's charm lies: surrendering to its opiate fade-outs without resistance will undoubtedly be the ideal way to fully appreciate it.

You'll find yourself ferried by the Nadler-siren along the rapids of the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon in 1928, on the trail of Glen and Bessie Hyde, newlywed adventurers honeymooning in their canoe, over the lapping of a delicate acoustic guitar arpeggio underpinned by synthetic bass, before the chorus unfolds into a wall of keyboard drones, horns and piano, wondering about their disappearance with that repeated "Did you make it?" ("Bessie, Did You Make It", which revives the vocative device of "Katie, I Know"). And you'll lose yourself on the "path of the clouds" of D.B. Cooper, who on November 24, 1971 hijacked a Boeing 727 and, with a $200,000 ransom in his pocket, parachuted out and vanished into thin air with his loot: the occasion for a reflection on what it means to take control of one's own destiny that permeates the refined title track, among the best tracks here, with its layers of bass and sparse touches of harpsichord paired with flute and distorted guitars. Or you'll immerse yourself in the icy ocean waters to follow, breath held, the fate of the escapees from Alcatraz prison in 1966 amid the bluesy languor of "Well Sometimes You Just Can't Stay". And confirmation that this unsolved-mysteries series truly is the album's real obsession comes with the quote from the late actor Robert Stack, host of the original version of the show, amid the dreamy opalescence of "From Vapor To Stardust".

Surrendering to the spell of these vaporous, watery sounds, one sometimes gets the very impression of "breathing underwater" ("If I Could Breathe Underwater", with an intriguing bassline, Lattimore's harp, fluttering drums and sighing backing vocals supporting another of Nadler's mesmeric litanies on supernatural powers), of losing oneself in an enchantment with the movements of the sparkling waltz of "And I Dream Of Running", carried out in tandem with Rundle, as is "Turned Into Air" (with electric pinpricks threatening the ecstasy of the fingerpicking), the bare, desperate prayer of "Storm", the quiet devastation of "Elegy" (with Lattimore's metaphysical harp, synth and horns to the fore) and the bluesy solemnity of "Couldn't Have Done The Killing", a murder ballad in which the protagonist defends herself against a murder accusation and which - despite the album's piano-based foundation - reveals how it's above all (gorgeous) guitars that emerge from the watery whirlpools of the arrangements, backed up, on this special mission, by "Well Sometimes You Just Can't Stay".

With the warmth of shimmering strings wrapping around a loving lullaby, "Lemon Queen" closes the album on a cinematic, somber note: "Higher and higher / above you", Marissa's mezzo-soprano hisses, leaving yet another mystery unresolved - namely, whether the person she's speaking to can still hear her.

“It’s always midnight in my heart”, confesses a disarmed Nadler on “Elegy”. And perhaps that's exactly why she's so easy to love, always and unconditionally. Even when, as on “The Path Of The Clouds”, she challenges listeners to attempt - more than just a listen - a full psychological and emotional transference. Not everyone can pull it off, but doing so can yield new, unfamiliar pleasures. Because music, deep down, always remains an unsolved mystery.

With New Radiations the artist neither betrays expectations nor attempts to update her sonic approach; sparser arrangements and the absence of drums and percussion underscore the new album's more earthbound nature, but unease and emotional vulnerability remain central. The more intimate, crepuscular tone is immediately established by the delicate acoustic guitar chords of "It Hits Harder", a song dedicated to the first woman to fly solo around the world, Geraldine Mock - a theme that returns with even greater force in "Weightless Above The Water" (the most intense track), whose protagonist is the first female cosmonaut, Valentina Tereshkova. Marissa Nadler's noir lullabies are caressing and romantic, as if suspended in a parallel world ("Bad Dreams Summertime", "Smoke Screen Selene"), not without echoes of country-western ("If It's An Illusion"), and alluring cosmic-folk vibrations ("Hatchet Man"). The title track stays true to the folk-noir atmosphere of New Radiations, but allows itself a biting finale, in perfect contrast with the mournful country nature of "You Called Her Camillia" and the evanescent "To Be The Moon King" and the even more angelic "Light Years".

Despite its title, New Radiations is a record devoid of innovative elements, but predictability never comes at the expense of quality: fragile yet melodically impeccable, these new songs remain deliberately dusty, wan. Marissa Nadler remains a singular voice; her music is a form of art, which is why it isn't instantly graspable in its entirety. More than a portrait, New Radiations is an artist's sketch, an album to return to now and then in search of answers, but above all of questions.

Contributions by Lorenzo Righetto (“Marissa Nadler”), Gianfranco Marmoro (“For My Crimes”, “Droneflower”, “New Radiations”)

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