I always have mixed feelings about kickstarter projects. On one hand you have this great platform that connects artists, musicians, filmmakers, and philanthropists with a massive pool of potential donators. On the other hand, you get fucking depressed that the type of stuff that is desperately trying to get funded is usually some of the best work out there. Case in point, this new Marissa Nadler album. In a just world, Nadler would be filling large venues and making millions of dollars while the Britney Spears’s of the world would be soliciting donations. Sometimes, it just doesn’t seem fair that the ultra-talented gets somehow lost in the fray.

Not to say that I don’t intend to contribute to the project, because I do (right now, I’m trying to convince my fiancee that $5,000 for Marissa to play a post-wedding party would be well worth it). Nadler has consistently released some of my favorite albums over the past couple of years and I definitely want her to continue doing so. Unsurprisingly, she’s already generated 85% of the $11,000 needed to record the album, so if you want to help push Nadler over the top, head over to her kickstarter page to donate.

EDIT: She’s made it over the $11,000 mark! She’s still taking pledges to help cover manufacturing costs, but the good news is that there will be a new album!

Marissa Nadler // Heartpaper Lover

I’ve long been a fan of the sweet a cappella tunes of the Vermont trio Mountain Man, and this video, recorded by Vincent Galgano in NYC, just reaffirms my love for the group:

Jimmy over at the great tumblr blog Head Underwater recently unearthed this killer video for Marissa Nadler’s “Thinking Of You” from two years ago. Amazing!

Speaking of amazing music vids, check this one for His Clancyness’s latest single “Summer Majestic”, as first premiered on Delicious Scopitone:

I always love the ingenuity of creative music listeners and the stuff they’re able to come up with. Take this weather channel heavy fan vid for Ariel Pink’s track “Reminiscences” for example:

Another cool archival video snipped together, this time for Baths’ track “Maximalist” [via: yvynyl]

Lastly, here is a great stripped-down version of the Norwegian electro-pop group Casiokids performing in Austria, recorded by the folks over at They Shoot Music:

Starting off is a grainy video that I included more because of the music and the musicians than the image quality. On a summer European tour date in Göteborg, Sweden, Massachusetts chanteuse Marissa Nadler teamed up with local Sarah Assbring (better known as El Perro del Mar) for a beautiful rendition of the Don Gibson classic “Oh Lonesome Me”:

One of my favorite concerts in recent memory was the Best Coast show I caught about a week and half ago. Well the videographers at the San Fran based site Truly Yours brilliantly captured Bethany Constantino and Bobb Bruno’s performance of “Crazy”, along with some back story showing how cool Bruno is (which I can confirm):

The next video is from one of my most anticipated SXSW bands, The Good The Bad. This midly NSFW vid for their simply titled “026″ captures the sex, drugs, and rock & roll this Danish band is known for:

Although the next one is just an audio rip of Gnonnas Pedro et ses Dadjes excellent track “Dadje Von O Von Non” (and a poor one at that, with the final 90-or-so seconds completely silent), ever since Chocolate Bobka featured it on his Sunday morning radio show, I’ve dusted off my copy of Legends of Benin and have been playing it a lot this week:

The guys over at IGIF labeled this video as of their favorites they’ve seen in a while. I tend to agree with them. Here is Fang Island‘s “Daisy”:

This final video is meant to get you pumped for the upcoming SXSW festival in Austin (only one more month!) Sit back, relax, and soak in the genius of Daniel Johnston as he performs “True Love Will Find You in the End”:

The album is available for digital download March 1 at the ridiculous minimum price of 2 Euros, but you’re welcome to donate more as all proceeds from the sale of the compilation will go to Amnesty International’s humanitarian aid projects in areas of conflict. If you want a full list of all the contributors you can check it out here. These are some of my personal favorites:

• Dan Deacon (US)
• Marissa Nadler (US)
• Voxtrot (US)
• The Antlers (US)
• Asobi Seksu (US)
• Dent May (US)
• Sic Alps (US)
• Thao and The Get Down Stay Down (US)
• Bonde do Role (Brazil)
• Patrick Wolf (UK)
• Malick Pathe Sow (Senegal)
• Malajube (Canada)
• The Hidden Cameras (Canada)
• Fennesz (Austria)
• Ane Brun (Norway)
• Vieux Farka Toure (Mali)
• Sally Shapiro (Sweden)
• Air France (Sweden)
• Mexican Institute of Sound (Mexico)

You can stream a handful of tracks and download Isreali Ivri Lider’s track “Mike” from the official site. I can’t wait for this!

Now I’m not much of a twitterer or tweeter or whatever you want to call it, but every now and then a nugget of awesome info seeps through the tweetscape and lands right in your lap. I’ve been following Marissa Nadler for quite some time and was elated to learn, via twitter of course, that she “has a version of ‘All My Trials’ on the Wears the Trousers tribute to Odetta”. I wasn’t familiar that there was an Odetta cover compilation even in the works, but a simple google search for “Wears the Trousers” displayed all the juicy details.

Evidently I didn’t get the memo that the new trend for online publications is to release cover compilations of recently deceased musicians, but one can be proud of the fact that all the proceeds from Beautiful Star are going towards reputable UK women’s charities — and what better way to honor one of the legends that closed the gender gap in music than contributions to feminist organizations! Now for those who don’t know anything about folk singer/musician/activist, be aware that a cursory look at her wikipedia page grossly underestimates here impact on music the past half century. It’s easy to swallow quick blurbs like Bob Dylan’s line “The first thing that turned me on to folk singing was Odetta” or Maya Angelou’s praise “If only one could be sure that every fifty years a voice and a soul like Odetta’s would come along, the centuries would pass so quickly and painlessly we would hardly recognize time”, but a more detailed investigation (one that will not be explored here at this time) will show more thoroughly and convincingly the influence this Southern singer yielded over not only individuals but the musical landscape itself.

Now I haven’t listened to the compilation yet — it’s set to be released November 30 — but one can imagine based on the tracklist how pleasant sounding it will be. Dotted with a handful of better known acts (Anais Mitchell, Marissa Nadler), the compilation is mostly composed of women singers who are either emerging or have never broken through. Contrary to what you might expect, all are very powerful singers (here’s to you Josephine Oniyama), demonstrating how hard it is for even talented artists to reach widespread acclaim. In fact, the compilation might just be a jumping off point to discovering a whole wave of talented female singers from across the globe, making the album exciting enough to buy.

Obviously the highlight for me will be to hear both Nadler’s and Mitchell’s take on the classic song “All My Trials” which has been amply covered by musicians over the years. Both singers have very unique voices that I’m sure will be utilized in order to add a different flavor to this 50s protest song. Odetta wasn’t the first to sing this song, but arguably one of the best, supplying Nadler and Mitchell with gigantic shoes to fill.

Here’s the full tracklist supplied by the album’s website as well as a couple of my favorite Odetta videos and a label approved mp3:

Tracklist
01 Linda Draper // “Sail Away Ladies”
02 Ane Brun // “If I Had A Ribbon Bow”
03 Gemma Ray // “900 Miles”
04 Anaïs Mitchell // “All My Trials”
05 Haunted Stereo // “Santy Anno”
06 Madam // “Waterboy”
07 Sandy Dillon // “Can’t Afford To Lose My Man”
08 Ora Cogan // “Motherless Child”
09 Josephine Oniyama // “The Gallows Pole”
10 Pepi Ginsberg // “Beautiful Star”
11 Society Of Imaginary Friends // “Another Man Done Gone”
12 Marissa Nadler // “All My Trials”
13 Kelli Ali // “All The Pretty Little Horses”
14 Katey Brooks // “What A Friend We Have”
15 Liz Durrett // “Chilly Winds”
16 Arborea // “This Little Light Of Mine”

Ora Cogan // Motherless Child (Odetta Cover)

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!

Marissa Nadler // Ghost and Lovers

Marissa Nadler // The Whole is Wide