Seriously, can someone make Marissa Nadler famous immediately? It’s a shame that she keeps popping up on “Awesome New Acts!” posts from across the blogosphere – hell even NPR who is normally above the curve just featured her on their second stage show which is normally reserved for unknown singers and bands. I guess it’s not all bad as NPR broke acts like Sufjan Stevens and Regina Spektor early in their career, but still…
I feel like the adjective “haunting” gets thrown out a little bit too much these days when describing vocals, but Nadler is pretty much the definition of the word. Although classified as “dream folk”, Nadler’s voice is more likely to be a soundtrack to a suspenseful nightmare than one filled with fluffy rabbits and candy houses. Pitchfork hits the nail on the head with their review of Ballads of Living and Dying by describing her has having “the sort of voice that you’d follow straight to Hades.” It’s difficult to pin point where the chilling feeling comes from when listening to anyone of Nadler’s albums. The tinge of vocal reverb, the casual shifts to minor keys, the dark undertones of her lyrics can all plead guilty at one time or another, but it’s the combination of these attributes with other indescribable unknowns that make up a typical Nadler song.
Her fourth LP Little Hells is arguably her best work to date for the 27 year old Bostonian. Released just a week ago, I’ve only had time now to digest it completely although I had already rendered my conclusion after the first listen: it’s amazing. From the opener “Heart Paper Love” to the closing track “Mistress”, there is not a throwaway song in the whole album.
The most troubling thing about Little Hells is the difficulty in deciding on which tracks are your most favorite. “The Whole is Wide” features Nadler’s airy voice, split into three part harmony, with only a bouncy repetitious piano line serving more as a metronome than accompaniment. This minimal instrumentation showcases Nadler’s knack for lyricism with lines like “Flowers dried along time ago my friend // And their hanging on the wall with wax and thread // When you were young, did you think it would ever end” where each line seem to float into each other. A critics favorite, “River of Dirt” has fuller instrumentation featuring a driving drum beat which doesn’t let the song sag to slow. I think I could listen to the lines “El Camino take me home” and “Back to the river of the dirt and fire” for a full 24 hours straight without any complaints. Not veering too much from the formula of past albums, “Rosary” contains a more traditional Nadler feel to it by sticking to a ¾ waltz beat and atmospheric chorus that can only be called angelic if it wasn’t so blasted creepy.
If you haven’t noticed, this album is pretty damn spectacular that should/will make some yearend lists. Although 2008 proved to be a pretty good year for music, this year might eclipse it by the end of March!
