Words: Gerd Steiger
Now that summer is offcially over and death and decay of autumn are lurking pretty much everywhere, it’s about time for you to stop fooling yourself and to once again realize that we are all doomed. That’s the bad news. The good news is that Marissa Nadler is back to add some much needed charm to that thought.
Marissa Nadler has come a long way since her first full-length Ballads of Living and Dying, released in 2004. From the very beginning the then 23-year-old has received much praise for creating otherworldly songs of stark and mesmerising beauty. Lyrically influenced by the literary genre of American Gothic (check out her rendition of Edgar Allan Poe’s poem Annabell Lee on her debut album), her guitar style is reminiscent of the likes of John Fahey and company. Nadler’s mezzosoprano voice has inspired comparisons to Hope Sandoval, Chan Marshall and Vasthi Bunyan and has been described as “a voice that you would follow straight into Hades”.
Nadler followed up her debut album with four more LPs, finding her voice along the way and marrying it to her unique musical identity to completely rid herself of any freak-folk tags that might have been attached to her earlier in her career. 2009′s fantastic Little Hells featured previously unheard of elements in Nadler’s work, transcending easy to categorize genres and proving to be a major step in Nadler’s musical development. On her latest self-titled release, we find Nadler continuing in that direction, providing us with yet eleven more melancholic songs of compelling beauty. What can I say, I love to be doomed.
Here’s The Sun Always Reminds Me Of You and Baby, I Will Leave You In The Morning off her new record:
Marissa Nadler – The Sun Always Reminds Me Of You by Peaknuckle Publicity Co.
Marissa Nadler – Baby I Will Leave You in the Morning by brooklynvegan
