Nicole Atkins - A Mermaid in Neptune City

In an era like the present one, where the ever richer and more chaotic musical offering manifests itself in an almost infinite number of colors and shades, it's quite difficult to pay attention to projects by artists who, refusing to dazzle at all costs on a first, cursory listen, end up being dismissed in a hurry, as listeners go searching for something fresher and, why not, more in line with the trends of the moment. In this "underrated" category we can surely count Nicole Atkins, a New Jersey singer-songwriter who, in just over ten years of a career spent "on the margins" of the big stages, has managed to craft music as credible as it is compelling. Given her disposition, we'd be tempted to call her a wholly independent artist, if not for that couple of inaugural spins on the record-industry carousel sponsored by a giant like Columbia. A rather cruel illusion, with hindsight, yet almost necessary for today's singer-songwriter to mature with the proper awareness. Her "fault", if we really have to pin one on her, was not to impress the listener with complicated harmonies or with elaborate sounds fished out from who knows where, but rather to rely on a constant process of reworking a wealth of musical tradition that has by now faded into pure mythology, a heartfelt vintage blend that brought together the swagger of Dusty Springfield, the tormented soul of Cass Elliot, and the guitar of Roy Orbison.

Indeed, there has never been any pretense of innovation in her work, just verses, choruses and bridges, skillfully built and arranged. Songs, in short, songs born from the melodic craft of a talent able to move through widely familiar territory (soul first and foremost, followed by a good dose of orchestral pop), yet translate it into something personal, filtered through a sensibility that finds full freedom of expression in her records.

For those who've learned to appreciate her quirks and her voice, Nicole seems to have almost taken a liking to making people miss her. Temperamentally averse to the rules of a gilded circus that risked destroying her, poorly tolerant of her own stubborn and erratic attitude, the thirty-eight-year-old from New Jersey has essentially trained listeners to expect sudden and prolonged disappearances. There are skeptics who consider her, for this reason, something of a burned-out hope, and it's plausible that, had she only opted for a more docile and deferential fit within the machinery of show business, she would still be releasing records for a major label today — with far greater frequency and promotional support — and would in all likelihood be shining among the brightest stars in that firmament. But under those conditions, evidently, it would have been too easy a task, and too thankless one at the same time. A game that, for obvious reasons, she chose not to play.

Just another Jersey Girl?

Neptune City, New Jersey, is a town of fewer than thirty thousand people, famous chiefly for being the birthplace of two of New Hollywood's most beloved actors, Jack Nicholson and Danny De Vito. A quiet setting barely ninety kilometers from New York, with its small bay, a beach on the Atlantic Ocean, and its modest little river, the Shark River, which found an exceptional chronicler in one of its most promising daughters. Nicole Atkins' was a precocious talent, raised on the records of the Ronettes, Johnny Cash, the Beach Boys and a host of more or less well-known Fifties crooners spun on the living room turntable, with a gift for piano and guitar evident even before she reached her teens. Leaving an indelible mark on her artistic formation were the six strings of Roy Orbison, the voice of the ill-fated Cass Elliot of the Mamas & Papas, and also that of a singer not yet enshrined in the history books in the early Nineties, the Sundays' vocalist Harriet Wheeler: more than just a few among many reference points by the time the young woman was attending St. Rose High School in nearby Belmar, and had begun performing in local coffeehouses, backed by a handful of amateur musicians.

With this modest wealth of experience behind her, the young singer then moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, where she studied graphic arts at university, got involved in the local music scene (both solo and as part of a sprawling collective, Nitehawk) and started writing songs. Her last years as a student saw her shuttling between Charlotte, where she performed fronting Virginia Reel and other little-known outfits, her hometown, where she was instead busy as the frontwoman of an alt-country band, Los Parasols, and the Bensonhurst neighborhood of Brooklyn. The now hard-to-find Parasols EP, "The Summer Of Love", came out in very few copies during 2002, but that was clearly a venture bound to be abandoned. Meanwhile her ties to the New York circuit and the musicians of a small independent label, Rainbow Quartz, grew stronger. It was in this context that Nicole became friends with David Muller, for a time drummer for Fischerspooner and the Fiery Furnaces, who, even with limited means, put his Manhattan apartment at her disposal and helped her record a demo CD titled "Party's Over" in the summer of 2004.

At the start of the following year, Dan Chen, keyboardist for ex-Soul Coughing member Mike Doughty, persuaded her to form a new band that would place the proper emphasis on her. Thus Nicole Atkins & The Sea was born, a quintet (rounded out by Dave Hollinghurst on guitars, John Flaugher on bass and Dan Mintzer on drums) that performed regularly around the East Village with its sly blend of Americana, Sixties pop and indie-rock. Frequent shows at Pianos, a well-known venue in the Lower East Side, drew the attention of several record labels in particular, who, also thanks to that valuable self-produced demo, showed themselves keen to offer the long-awaited first contract to the twenty-seven-year-old and her bandmates. Of them all, in January 2006, none other than Columbia won out with ease, though it was the tiny Red Ink that could boast the very first pressing under that name.

It was indeed October when the debut EP, Bleeding Diamonds, came out: six tracks introducing a promising torch-songstress, adept at painting noirish moods and atmospheres with real personality and a command of vibrato that doesn't go unnoticed. Nicole already enchants with this first collection of carousels, at times mournful ("Decora"), at times languid and delicately overripe ("Snowshakes"), all within a chamber-pop sensibility of bygone days that reaches its peak on the title track, a little gem in miraculous balance between fairy-tale sophistication and singer-songwriter directness.

It works extremely well as an appetizer for the full-length debut, also because, although only two of its songs would later be revisited, it broadly anticipates the formula of an album still far from ready but one which, according to those in the know, promised to be rather interesting. The decisive step came at the end of 2006, when the group flew to Sweden, first to Kalgerup and then to Malmö, to work under Tore Johansson (the man who "created" the Cardigans, and who also worked with Saint Etienne, Franz Ferdinand and Boss Hog).

A framed cover, one of those stylish, illustrated sleeves that circulated during the Sixties, with divas immortalized in their most elegant outfits and bands perfectly turned out. What's the difference compared to covers from forty years earlier? Just look at the central portrait, enclosed in an oval reminiscent of an old, enamel-finished photo frame. Not in her gala dress, but with a pensive gaze and hair left loose on her shoulders, Nicole Atkins is a child of her own time: she lets the past surround her without it compromising her identity or spirit. If it's true that judging a book (or an album) by its cover usually leads to completely wrong conclusions, this time the few observations drawn so far from one image tell us a great deal about the motives and the content of Neptune City, the long-awaited first step for the New Jersey singer-songwriter.

Past and present, as we were saying: indeed, across the ten tracks that make up the record, what's evident is Atkins' love for a world she never lived through directly, but one she loved and understood through her family's record collection, and ultimately reworked through the sensibility of a contemporary woman and songwriter, respectful yet unafraid to measure herself against sounds and aesthetics that are by now thoroughly historicized. Brill Building, doo-wop, blue-eyed soul, touches of jazz, endless baroque-pop splendor: these are the coordinates of a work that simply has no use for the present day, preferring instead to offer a new context to a musical universe long since considered definitively past.

Granted, it's true that the historical moment also seemed rather favorable to the emergence of an artist like her. The year before had seen the release, on the other side of the Atlantic, of an instant classic like "Back To Black" by Amy Winehouse, which brought back into the spotlight the gestures and forms of a now largely forgotten way of writing pop music, reaching back to the golden age of Stax and Motown in a gutsy, full-blooded updating of the stylistic hallmarks of the dazzling English-speaking Sixties. What's more, the album's baroque, grandiloquent attitude found a notable counterpart in the contemporaneous "Release The Stars" by Rufus Wainwright, another artist capable of lending new shine and contemporary relevance to idioms that would otherwise seem the exclusive preserve of a handful of devoted fans.

In short, alongside her talent, there was certainly no shortage of ideal conditions for a good slice of the audience to be won over, nor of the opportunity to stand out among the forerunners of a "vintage-ist" trend (take the term with the necessary grain of salt) that, from Adele to Lana Del Rey, would have an easy ride with mainstream audiences in the years to come. Indeed, what's stirring in this debut is a juicy and seductive preview of many of the records that would be released by those exponents of a refined, old-fashioned pop, embellished with lavish orchestrations, dazzling strings and passionate torch-songs sung by a heartbroken diva. And yet, compared to the vast majority of colleagues who would follow more or less directly in her footsteps, the character and depth of her work speak to a compositional awareness and an expressive level that place Atkins a cut above, a maturity and refinement earned through years of hard-won experience, stumbles, fine-tuning and fresh starts.

Structured as a kind of counterproposal to "Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J.", Neptune City is an album in which performer and songwriter assert themselves forcefully, dictating their own rules and imposing a personality that defies simple categorization. Across its ten tracks, the songwriter fully displays her versatility, moving between brilliant Golden Age Hollywood nocturnes ("Together We Are Alone", a limpid ballad dotted with understated piano touches and vivid violin patterns), episodes that bring to life the dream of a second Ronettes album (the reference to the melodic cut and the expressive cadences of the Spectorian girl-group sound is clear in the opener "Maybe Tonight"; and in the more subdued closer "Kill The Headlights", where piano, guitar and a finely woven string arrangement underpin a fine soul carousel), and moments of true baroque jubilation, where the legacy of Sixties American pop is reassembled with all possible magnificence ("The Way It Is", which, between harpsichords and bluesy twang, represents the clearest example of just how much strength is invested in the album's arrangements).

Even with such a substantial menu, Nicole shines with the necessary ease, thanks to a powerful, intense voice that never indulges in self-satisfaction or empty technical display. The album indeed offers an excellent and varied range of interpretations, moving in subtle, almost imperceptible shifts (unlike what will sometimes happen on later records) from sensual to commanding, from nostalgic to gutsy, even venturing to try her hand at the terrain of America's most seductive crooners. That's the case with the title track, a country-flavored ballad brimming with the charm and melancholy of a vocal-jazz standard (with melodic openings that in their own way foreshadow the art-pop flourishes of St. Vincent or the already-mentioned Lana Del Rey), in which biography and narrative intertwine inseparably, one of the many dedications the songwriter explicitly addresses to places or situations tied to her hometown.

And the places close to her heart extend all the way to brush against the imaginary backstage of the Big Apple. In "Brooklyn's On Fire" the arrangement grows richer in terms of animation and pushes toward a chorality that was then at the height of fashion, in a perfect interplay of call-and-response from an indie-folk gang and passionate refrains, like a new Dusty Springfield caught up in the thick of turmoil and passion yet able to step back from too much involvement with a touch of irony. However you look at it, then, the album shows no real weak spot; if anything, it suggests that Atkins possesses a talent capable of operating across the most varied contexts.

The infectious groove of "Party's Over", complete with Christmas bells and harpsichord (almost a more dynamic reworking of the Left Banke's elegant elegies), and the rock grit, all drums and electric guitar lines, of "Love Surreal" (notable the pronunciation of "surreal", at times stressed in a way that evokes a more concrete "so real") both attest to the skill of a singer who, even at these early recorded steps, already knows how to bring a whole range of nuance to a perfectly articulated and recognizable expressive palette. And this was only the beginning. Originally scheduled for July 2007, Neptune City didn't reach stores until the end of October, on the specific instructions of co-president Rick Rubin (who deemed a re-mastering necessary). It debuted at number twenty on Billboard's Top Heatseekers chart but, despite favorable reviews, rather conspicuously missed the mark that the higher-ups at Sony had set for it: turning Nicole into a top-tier star rather than merely a lovely copy of Loretta Lynn or, to stay contemporary, of Jenny Lewis (names the press often invoked, not always appropriately).

A World Full of Love

A 2008 spent almost entirely touring the United States and Europe to promote the album closes with the release of a covers EP, Nicole Atkins Digs Other People's Songs, again via Columbia (which in the meantime goes all in by also reissuing the first EP). It's a small, wide-ranging collection of reinterpretations (from the Doors to Nada Surf, from the Mamas & Papas to Church) that are all in all unimpeachable and vibrant enough, to which Nicole lends her unmistakable pouty delivery with just the right amount of commitment, making up for the limits of a musical backing that perhaps errs on the side of excessive neatness and calligraphic tidiness (in the washed-out "Inside Of Love" her gifts as a top-tier interpreter emerge in all their potential). The absolute classic "Dream A Little Dream Of Me", in particular, seems written especially for Nicole, who almost hams it up with unbearable skill.

Also worth noting, during this same period, is her role as backing vocalist and harmony singer on the well-received sophomore effort by A.C. Newman, "Get Guilty" (2009).

What follows, however, is a difficult and rather turbulent phase in which our artist struggles to find her footing. The members of her band split off for other commitments just as her long but troubled relationship with Paul Ritchie (of Parlor Mob) comes to an end. As if that weren't enough, the singer is also dropped by Columbia, which had evidently been expecting commercial returns of a very different order. This explains why the sophomore record wouldn't arrive until early 2011, after she signed with an independent label, Razor & Tie. It's produced by Phil Palazzolo, who had already worked with New Pornographers, Okkervil River and Ted Leo, and whom she'd met during her brief studio stint working for Newman. For the occasion Nicole puts together a brand-new backing band - later described by her as the best group of musicians she's ever had the chance to work with - made up of guitarists Irina Yalkowsky and Bradley York, bassist Jeremy Kay and drummer Ezra Oklan. A special guest on "War Is Hell" is Jim James of My Morning Jacket.

Mondo Amore perfectly mirrors the upheavals the singer-songwriter went through over the preceding two years, moving away from the debut's glossy retro atmospheres in favor of a more nervous, modern sound, clearly geared towards uncovering a rock soul that had previously been kept in check. The lead single "Vultures" is proof enough: the broken yet powerful vocal delivery, the constant shifts in intensity and color, a menacing sense of doom running through it all (well underlined too by the splendid video accompanying the song) make the track a complete reversal of direction for anyone expecting a continuation of the sophisticated, lacquered style that would certainly have earned her more than a little flattering critical attention in less unlikely quarters. But Atkins, it seems, doesn't lack courage, and the seductive Brill Building influences of Neptune City, which had earned her the less-than-flattering title of a new Dusty Springfield, are replaced here by more pronounced drums, tighter rhythms and also a touch more compositional flair, which shields her from any comparisons to the likes of Adele.

Here she is, then, swept up in her own emotional intensity, surrendering to the unbridled melody of "You Come To Me", flirting with country on the carefree "My Baby Don't Lie", riding the bittersweet refrain of "Cry Cry Cry" with real bite, making the most of a scratchy vocal timbre that signals a renewed confidence.

It's Nicole's throbbing, full-blooded voice that holds together the wide range of registers on display, and even more so her splendid performances, aimed at showing a strengthened femininity, full of newfound awareness and ready to face the next challenges with a decisive, forward-looking spirit. Even in the three closing torch-songs there's no trace of excessive delicacy, however much the sparseness of the arrangements might suggest otherwise. The refined jazzy orchestrations, chiseled down to the smallest detail, take nothing away from the vibrant readings the singer-songwriter gives her own music. Starting with the closing "The Tower", the album's masterpiece track, all the ballads it contains move along the two coordinates just described, never smothering the melodic clarity, which is intensified by the stentorian lyricism of a proud, combative woman who finds in the strength of her emotions a way to push back against the soul's uncertainties, even when everything seems to be collapsing around her ("There's a tower crumbling down", she sings with anguish at the climax of the aforementioned track).

The curious Italian title thus finds its explanation: the world is full of love, Atkins has realized as much, and she gives body and soul to a newfound harmony with everything around her. Her songs, endowed with that rare ability to speak to a wide audience without ever slipping into banality, tell of life, of life lived with the full awareness of how much incredible beauty there can be around us, despite the many hardships we have to face. It's up to listeners, sadly fewer and fewer these days, to pick up on the message and treasure it, guarding it like a small flame threatened by the wind.

If sales struggle, critics applaud. The New York Times and Rolling Stone write about Mondo Amore in more than flattering terms, the New Yorker even covers the release party held at the Music Hall of Williamsburg, while Spin Magazine will describe Nicole and the Black Sea's performance at South By Southwest as the most exciting of the entire festival. An endless US tour keeps Atkins busy for about a year, opening for shows by Black Keys, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Primal Scream, Regina Spektor and her friends the Avett Brothers (to finally see her in Italy, though, you'd have to wait until 2013, when she'll open for Eels), and Razor & Tie tries to strike while the iron's hot with a live EP, "'Till Dawn", at the end of 2011. Only once this exhausting circus comes to an end does our artist start writing new material together with producer Jim Sclavunos, previously drummer for Nick Cave and, before that, for Sonic Youth. The sessions, however, are derailed by Hurricane Sandy, which destroys part of Nicole's home studio in New Jersey, leaving it unusable for a long time, as well as several hundred vinyl copies of her previous releases.

Anguish in a chamber-pop key

Learning of her latest run of misfortune, Tore Johansson invites Atkins to Sweden, putting both himself and his studio at her disposal for the recording of her new album. The result, which makes no secret of its ambition to be a genuine comeback record for the musician, is titled Slow Phaser and represents perhaps the American singer's oddest work, funded through a crowdfunding campaign and released, not without some risk, directly on the singer's own label, Oh, Mercy!

It's precisely the presence of the Scandinavian producer that establishes an implicit, ideal link back to her debut, and it's no coincidence that his touch is recognizable right from the start, when Nicole's soft lighting and sensual yet severe moves, every inch the perfect femme fatale, shade into an enveloping, nocturnal retro-pop. What stands out is her confidence, a weapon that's always been part of her artistic arsenal. Her character and her enchantress's touch help make a brooding, carefully measured ballad sound sumptuous, an obvious compromise between the baroque-pop fantasias of the debut and the bold authorial about-face of the sophomore record: this, in the end, will be the expressive direction of a third LP that promises not to be an easy one.

The point is borne out in the following "It's Only Chemistry", made euphoric and lilting like a trip out on the open sea, helped along too by a choir brought in to lend support and sweetly intoxicate the listener. Atkins wraps the listener in an exercise worthy of a seasoned mistress of seduction, where, by enlisting a more traditionalist arsenal (banjo included) and indulging in a performance that flirts openly with country, she bears witness to this search for a worldly-wise accommodation between her earlier incarnations - the fairy-tale, colorful one and a more intimate one, firmly rooted in her Yankee background. Towering over it all is a vocal performance that's as convincing as ever, a display of sharp, flawless virtuosity.

On Slow Phaser the songwriting seems to chase the same eclectic, oblique trajectories as the more daring Brisa Roché in her boldest moments, playing it lean and not shying away from synthetic shading within the framework of what remains an effortlessly easy-listening record. The recourse to subtle stylistic hybrids offers itself as a convenient device that the singer is skilled at giving the right tangible substance to, thanks to the multicolored qualities of her gorgeous voice, warm and glowing.

At first the arrangements can be a bit jarring, as can the fiery choral inserts. "We Wait Too Long" is the track where such devices are most exposed, and the performance tends to swell into a grandiose number that errs a little on the side of affectation. There's no pandering, though, in its somewhat overwrought poses, and the repetition ends up justifying even the seemingly boldest choices. Less Nashville and more avant-pop à la My Brightest Diamond, in other words, but any risk of over-sophistication is averted from the start because Nicole remains a songwriter with solid, deep roots. She captivates with the limpid clarity of her siren's voice and, while a simplification of the arrangements seems undeniable, this doesn't diminish the appeal of a genuine, personal signature. Which shows at its best on "Red Ropes", benefiting from the same superb melodic naturalness as the finest pages of her past work, from "The Way It Is" to "The Tower". Even in the emphasis of a build that doesn't rule out melodramatic turns, Atkins is sensational in the way she manages to shatter the constraints of formal artifice and assert herself in her authenticity as a woman first, and an artist second. Stentorian, infectious, moving, as few today know how to be.

The hazy, gray architectures that serve as backdrops, especially in the (remarkable) second half, reveal a curious correspondence with the Apple of her latest, anguished album. Nicole too isn't afraid to show herself more raw, worn down by moods weighed with unease, but she comes through it with poise, with the strength of spells as simple as they are effective. The magic lies in the angularity of that versatile voice of hers, whose inflections steer the songs exactly where she wants them to go, striking the right chords in anyone willing to listen.

She's a spirited girl from New Jersey, yet, like Fiona, far less sunny than one might be led to imagine. So the placid folk-pop with its seventies streaks on "The Worst Hangover" unexpectedly veers into yet another anguished torch-song, mimicking a gradual slide into a painful, even desperate spiral.

Rounding out the picture of this unexpected kinship is the little gospel folly titled "Sin Song", which closely recalls the intricately woven polyphony set up by the Maggart sisters in "Hot Knife", lively and chant-like but only deceptively carefree. For the farewell, instead, a quieter passage is favored, purged of the dross of her own expressionist streak but still watchful, never truly at peace.

Worn out by handling distribution entirely on her own, for her fourth release Nicole signs with a small Alabama label, Single Lock. Inspired by the work of (an all-too-obvious) Dusty Springfield, Peggy Lee, Candi Staton, Barbra Streisand, and once again her idol Roy Orbison, the new Goodnight Rhonda Lee is recorded in Fort Worth, Texas, in just five days, together with the Niles City Sound team (Austin Jenkins, Josh Block, Chris Vivion, with a contribution from Ben Tanner of Alabama Shakes), a production crew acclaimed nationally as the force behind the success of retro-soul rising star Leon Bridges, ideal for giving her the romantic mood and classic soul atmosphere Atkins had long been searching for.

It's a record about personal redemption following a new phase of vulnerability and transition: cooling enthusiasm, a happy marriage nonetheless experienced as a sort of finish line, excessive indulgence in hard liquor; and then her father's serious illness, a spark that roused her from the shallows she had slowly drifted into, helping her recover the drive and inspiration she had lost. Also proving absolutely crucial is the move from the all-too-comfortable calm of Asbury Park – where, more or less continuously, the Jersey girl had always lived – to the far more electrifying setting of Nashville, in fact a natural home for an artist like her. Encouraging her above all is a longtime friend, Chris Isaak, who also appears as co-writer on "A Little Crazy".

The title of the collection refers to the alias Atkins has always given to her worst habits, the vice-prone side of herself that it was finally time to put to bed, once and for all – though who knows if the new chapter also includes her cover of "Heroes", lent around the same time to a famous beer brand for a drunk-driving awareness campaign. So it's a record about awakenings and self-discipline, not without a good dose of irony, and one that shows no hesitation in looking back, even boldly, at a past that quickly fades into mythology. More joyful than the eccentric imbalances (and some moody slumps) of Slow Phaser, this is in all likelihood her sunniest and most self-aware work. The title track, for instance, confidently returns to her first and never-faded love, country music livened up with jazz cadences, finding unexpected common ground with the most recent effort by another talented artist who seems to have staked everything on introspection and heart, the Sallie Ford of "Soul Sick".

The New Jersey singer-songwriter recaptures right from the start the radiant, confidential intonation of her debut, trimming the orchestral flourishes just enough to keep the unadulterated magic of her robust voice at center stage – now less triumphant and more human, less afraid to reveal some fragility but still in the mood for wonders and bewitching, old-fashioned infections. Her sophisticated pop-noir sounds more adult and balanced today, less naively pyrotechnic or fairy-tale-like, more attentive than ever to philological nuance, to the precision of an expressive code that is shamelessly derivative and, just as in the case of Leon Bridges, revels in being so. It feeds the listener the pleasure of a sort of diorama effect, yet without the typical pitfalls of overly theatrical works, and with the compensation of a vocal performance perhaps never so warm and true, incisive regardless of the lavishness of the decor (which actually proves far more measured than her usual output). The economy of means works in her favor, allowing proper emphasis on every nuance of a performer who can be sensual and sentimental, languid and stubborn within the span of a single song.

So what's missing from an album so attentive to emotional payoff and at the same time to form? A few surprising jolts, perhaps, because while the songs come off placid and beautifully polished, it's undeniable that the touch of madness evoked only in the opening track (but then essentially disowned) would have served a collection lacking any notably jarring moments. This time the outbursts all sound rigorously controlled ("Brokedown Luck", for example) and therefore inevitably at least partly defused. So while the listening experience thrives on the gratification of this or that detail, the lightning-bolt moments Nicole has always accustomed us to seem to be missing, and here and there a yawn should be expected. Her class, in any case, is beyond question, and a nocturnal gem like "I Love Living Here (Even When I Don't)" seems placed here precisely to prove it.

Slightly livelier passages thanks to a horn section ("Sleepwalking") reinforce an overall impression of pleasantness but don't overturn the outlook of an album entirely played out within the velvet of a reassuring stylistic comfort-zone – to be honest, considerably less daring than its predecessor. But this is undoubtedly the record Atkins needed at this point in her life, and it's precisely in that light that it should be framed and appreciated. Like Mondo Amore a few years earlier, Goodnight Rhonda Lee is a work inspired by many painful fractures yet carried off with poise, muting her visceral nature as much as possible without silencing the captivating expressiveness of a restless artist. Even when openly confronting her own demons, Nicole sets aside the rawness she made no effort to hide elsewhere, drawing instead on the same sober, melancholy enchantment found in the rest of the album, reining in impulsiveness to favor the deliberation of a finally clear mind. That happens in the closing moments, between a magnificent "A Night Of Serious Drinking" and the splendid noir ballad "A Dream Without Pain", which brings the curtain down.

Three years after her most painful country venture, the second chapter under Single Lock arrives, Italian Ice, an album that confirms Nicole Atkins as a substantial songwriter incapable of producing a record below a certain standard. While remaining true to a gloriously vintage aesthetic, the fifth album resists overly orthodox assimilation, letting vocal commitment and authorial personality make the difference, in a return to soul that rewards the warmth and maturity of one of the most reliable interpreters of the American song.

The sixties touch that pervades the whole collection, with its nods to the Brill Building aesthetic (already suggested by "Neptune City", albeit in a far more charged key) and to the great heroines of blue-eyed soul, won't win over in any way those seeking from singer-songwriter music a more modern timbre and a less classic approach. Even so, Atkins's pen proves anything but predictable or trite, offering a handful of songs that know how to engage with classicism without losing sight of their author's powerful expressiveness, as she once again digs into her own life for vital sustenance. Memories of youth and summers spent along the Jersey Shore become pliable material, emotional substance that the songstress pours into ten new tracks ("A Road To Nowhere" is a cover, subtly tinged with psych touches, of the Carole King song) built around a sense of home and belonging, around a creeping nostalgia that nonetheless never curdles into cloying nostomania.

With a lifetime's worth of musical friends and heroes lending a hand, the project ranges between brushed rock numbers with a magical atmosphere ("AM Gold"), Carpenters-flavored country ballads ("Captain"), and moments of pure storytelling, where Atkins's voice shines in its powerful contralto ("St. Dymphna", a perfect modern-day transposition of the Spectorian touch, complete with a painful lyric to match). And while one might feel the need for a bit more dynamism, the pairing of "Mind Eraser" and "Domino", with their lean basslines and subdued grooves, adds a touch of funk modernity that resonates perfectly in 2020. It's a shame the closing stretch feels more muted than it should, never quite pushing past a job well done, but what remains is the certainty of an author well aware of her own abilities, put to use once again for a solidly good album with just the right momentum.

Nicole Atkins, in short, keeps confirming herself as an artist who is certainly not obscure or difficult, yet remains intensely complicated, passionate, never banal. And amid subtle nuances and the occasional inevitable emotional turbulence, her records continue to resemble her, reflecting her elusive, precious beauty.

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