I saw Marissa Nadler once at a half-empty bar in downtown Oakland and she did not disappoint. Her gorgeous voice in top form, she walked through a pitch perfect selection of tracks from her voluminous catalog, mostly songs from 2021’s Path Of the Clouds, backed by a trio of Nashville pros crammed onto a stage so small the keyboardist was one scoot away from falling off and cracking his head. It was magical. I was one of many bewitched that night by her soft presence and delicate music – when I wasn’t freaking out about the keyboardist.
One aspect of the show did surprise me: the audience. For an artist known for writing such fragile music, Nadler attracted a good amount of dudes. I mean today’s dude, who puts serious time into lifting weights and less time reading books. (Maybe a better term would be bro? I think someone had their hat backwards.) Most notably they were right up front, directly in her sightline, making requests. It would’ve been obnoxious if they weren’t asking for the song we were all dying for her to play, “Quicksilver Daydreams of Maria.” The Townes Van Zant tribute album that featured the song had just come out but sadly she hadn’t practiced it for the tour.
I wanted to hear that song so bad. My mom died just months before the show and I played Nadler’s version constantly during her last weeks alive. It was the lullaby I needed my mom to sing to me as I watched her fade away, It was the soundtrack for all those tears. Nadler’s voice soothed me and gave me permission to cry, which I so badly needed to do.
At the show I couldn’t help myself and told her about the song’s connection to my mom’s death – I shouldn’t have, I know – but she took it in stride. It felt like it wasn’t the first time she had heard something like that, someone’s deep confession spurred on by her soaring voice, and she knew how to take it. She’s clearly used to it. With a voice like that, you have to understand how it can affect people.
Nadler’s been releasing albums for over 20 years and while she’s been a standout songwriter since her first album, 2004’s Ballads for Living and Dying, the foundation of her long career is her voice. That voice is a super power. It’s both breathy and strong, with the ability to get nice low and then harmonize in the highest registers. It’s a goddamn national treasure and I won’t stand for anyone saying anything bad about it.
Much of Nadler’s early work was pretty traditional; it fit into conventional genres, though she did hop a bit between sounds, mostly sticking in Country/Old Tyme Americana territory. But the second half of her career, especially after she signed with the label Sacred Bones, sees her focusing much more on the overall sound surrounding her voice. Her newest album, New Radiations, is the logical result of this trend. It is an exploration of atmospheres for Nadler’s voice, and not just cavernous ones.
The album opens with It Hits Harder, an unpredictable-yet-epic ballad driven by her overdubbed voices but laden with all kinds of sounds, including distorted guitars, 70’s-era synths (think Chiliwack’s “Dreams, Dreams Dreams”) and possibly even an accordion. This is followed up by Bad Dreams Summertime, a track tailor-made for a cult movie soundtrack directed by Blue Velvet-era David Lynch or Edward Scissorhands-era Tim Burton. And while It Hits Harder sounded like it came from outer space, Bad Dreams Summertime sounds like it was recorded in the clouds with a backup band made up of angels.
Even the songs that feature her most common palette – finger-plucked guitar, drone, and enough vocal overdubs to create a chorus – have little twists in them. This is no more prominent than on the album’s third track, You Called Her Camelia, which would be a great but typical Nadler track if it didn’t include a short slide guitar part straight out of a Pavement or Elephant Six Collective song.
The title track practically serves as an overture for the album and its ever-revolving cadre of backing instruments and sounds. What starts as a chugging, minor key, olde-tymey country song a la Lefty Frizzelle or Marty Robbins then turns into a Neil Young-inflected folk rock song complete with in-your-face distorted guitars before mutating into washy psych rock song that could’ve been written by Hawkwind. It’s a real musical adventure.
The whole rest of the album is like this, with Nadler taking big swings at different tones and textures rather than genres or “feels.” While most have Nadler’s trademark melancholy, sometimes they’re dark, like on the slightly creepy If It’s An Illusion or on the heavy goth country Smoke Screen Selene. There’s even tracks that are a bit happy, like the ironically-named, somewhat-triumphant Sad Satellite.
Really, the only constant throughout the albums in terms of sounds is the lack of drums. There’s no work for a drummer on this tour – as a matter of fact, she’s been playing these new songs solo, recreating all the parts herself. That being said, this is definitely a soundtrack album. This one would be hard to listen to while working out. Honestly, the most ideal listening situation would be to throw it on and go for a long drive through a desert as the sun sets. With its giant soundscapes and Nadler’s heavenly harmonies, listening to it while cruising the desert promises to be a positively cosmic experience. Maybe you’ll come away understanding why a bunch of dudes fawn over her and her voice.
