Today, Minneapolis, MN’s NADINE, a new project featuring members of Phantom Posse and Ava Luna, has released “Ultra Pink,” the lead single from their debut album, oh my. Gorilla vs Bear, who premiered the song about “knowing you can do something before you do it” are saying it’s “buoyant and irresistibly quirky.” Additionally they’re saying oh my is “a playful, warm, almost loungy collection of deceptively sophisticated pop gems that somehow manage to feel instantly familiar, but also continue to unfurl and reveal their understated magic over repeat listens.
Here to remind us that music is not just an audible experience, Minneapolis / New York’s NADINE make melodies that transcend acoustics. Their debut album oh my is a collection of sophisticated modern pop songs that resonate in the gaps, the space between deadlines and timelines.
More akin to poetry set to music, NADINE is all about exploring feeling. Whilst most poets revel in the personal, NADINE’s process is collaborative whose core is singer Nadia Hulett (part of the loose collective Phantom Posse) and Julian Fader and Carlos Hernandez (both of Ava Luna). The trio’s practice is marked by their commitment to playfulness, curiosity, and fluidity.
NADINE’s songs have one foot standing firm in pop, but ebb and flow with exploration and experiment. Polyphonic melodies swing and gambol, instrumental layers take generous flourishes and unexpected turns with an ear to the wondrous and occasionally weird, crafting jazz-tinged lounge-pop all held together by Hulett’s characteristic vocals, strong with a sincerity and gentleness that holds the listener. Let go of old ideas. Listen for tricks of the light. What does it feel like?
Nadia looks at the origin of the songs: “My body is filled with melodies and sonic textures, incubating & looping. My father was a club singer before I came around, and I still sing melodies I explored as a child, the big soul music my parents were into. Those tunes just come back and I’ll cut them up and place them with something new. Extracted from daydreams past, present & future. My mom says she has memories of me in the back of the car with a marker and paper asking her to spell out word by word lyrics to a song I was scheming up.”
Photo by Jimmy Magliozzie
