MARISSA NADLER - The Saga Of Mayflower May

Perhaps it's easier to withdraw into oneself and express one's pain through the words and music of a song after the breakup of a long, intense romantic relationship — that's how it was for Joni Mitchell before she created her masterpiece "Blue", and that's how it was for Marissa Nadler before she picked up her guitar and devoted herself to this record of hers, "The Saga Of Mayflower May".

The reference to Joni Mitchell is no accident, because Marissa Nadler seems to fit right into that group of folk singers who made the female voice great in postwar popular music too; alongside the aforementioned Mitchell, we also need to mention Joan Baez, who perhaps more than anyone else has endured in the great collective imagination of folk music, and whose lesson is clearly perceptible in Nadler's superb voice. There's no great historical movement behind her (as there was for Joan Baez), just the simple desire of a young woman to express her feelings through her guitar and her voice, in a record that musically doesn't aim too high and consists of eleven acoustic sketches lit up by the odd instrumental touch (like the flute), but above all by Marissa's vocal abilities.

Right from the opening track, "Under An Old Umbrella", the evocative mood reaches its peak: over the notes of an acoustic guitar that almost fades into the background, Nadler manages to conjure up a whole universe of feelings and sensations, sensations that promptly return, seemingly amplified, in the second track, which at times recalls Baez at her very best, with a vocal delivery that's clear yet at the same time deep and solemn. With the third track, "Mr. John Lee", Marissa drops the tone slightly and takes us into a more dreamlike piece, perhaps the most beautiful on the whole record, one that at times recalls Janis Joplin's "Me And Bobby McGee", but with the sweetness of an angel. "Yellow Lights" also falls into this latter category, but takes on the colours of spring, with a vaguely bucolic atmosphere and vocals that manage to convey both melancholy and joy at once — the feeling of remembering a happy past that's now far away.

"Damsels In The Dark" is a slight upswing in which the guitar seems to reclaim the scene a little, with the voice adapting to the instrument, while the vocals chase after it with the same wonderful, dreamy docility as ever; it all fades into "Lily, Henry & The Willow Trees", in which the guitar finally takes over, while Nadler's voice seems almost to play a supporting role, distant yet at the same time as evocative as a past that refuses to pass. "Old Love Haunts", on the other hand, picks up the tones of "Yellow Lights" and seems to shine with light once again, light that's dimmed but still light, intensified by Nadler's vocalising, which refreshes the late-summer evenings like a gentle breeze.

"In The Time Of The Lorry Low" follows on from the previous track like a change of season, plunging us into a suddenly wintry mood, almost spectral and gloomy, in which Nadler's wonderful voice wanders like a ghost among the frozen trees of winter. The record closes with the pairing of "Calico" and "Horses And Their Kin", in which Marissa leads us by the hand through her feelings, at first clear and then increasingly dark and gloomy, until they become stretched out, almost ethereal and dreamlike, in a world of spirits and ghosts, much like the human mind itself.

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16/12/2009