Marissa Nadler

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Marissa Nadler (2011)

Marissa Nadler (born April 5, 1981 in Washington, DC ) is an American singer, guitarist and painter. She grew up in Needham , Massachusetts , and now lives in Boston after a long stay in Providence , Rhode Island .

Family and art studies

Nadler already came into contact with various arts at home, her mother Pamela Joyce is an abstract painter, her older brother is a guitarist and now a writer. The roots of Nadler's interest in supernatural motifs can also be seen in her family, as her mother was interested in occultism from an early age . Nadler later studied painting, illustration, and art education at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence. Her role models in the visual field during this time included painters such as Adolf Wölfli , Egon Schiele and Paul Klee , the assemblage artist Joseph Cornell and the photographer Diane Arbus . For a short time she worked as an art teacher in Harlem , New York . During her studies she developed her own folkloric painting style, around the same time she turned more to music, which appeared to her to be less academic.

Music style and artistic self-image

Marissa Nadler learned singing and guitar through self-taught studies at the age of fourteen. An early album called Autumn Rose and another EP were initially not released, it wasn't until 2004 that their first CD Ballads of Living and Dying was released . Nadler's music follows the classic American singer-songwriter tradition and is characterized by a melancholy mood. In addition to her characteristic mezzo-soprano (comparisons with Hope Sandoval , Sandy Denny , Vashti Bunyan , Kate Bush and others can be drawn), the acoustic guitar in an archaic two-finger-picking style is particularly formative for her music , but also the banjo and ukulele . The accompanying instruments include electric guitar , organ , accordion , dobro , keyboard and theremin ; percussion is usually not used. The texts, which are rarely written in the first person, often deal with morbid topics, sadness and being lost. In doing so, Nadler creates an art world in which supernatural themes such as the revenant motif are just as central as vaguely suggested settings from earlier eras. Many of the songs have a ballad structure, some of the fictional characters recur in their songs as a leitmotif, e.g. B. the figure Mayflower May, which can be interpreted as the artist's alter ego . Nadler's close connection to literature is also evident in the texts. Some songs deal with events in literary history, for example two songs deal with the death of the two authors Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath , who are only mentioned by their first names in the lyrics and thus fit into Nadler's world of characters almost unnoticed. Poems are also set to music, such as Hai Tantos Muertos by Pablo Neruda and the ballad Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe . The selection of this poem also underscores the closeness of her own song lyrics to the literature of American Gothic .

Nadler's music is often categorized as a new variant of folk in the Appalachian or Americana style, and a certain proximity to the New Weird America movement can be discerned. In addition to Nina Simone , Billie Holiday , Tom Waits , Patti Smith and Joni Mitchell, she also counts Leonard Cohen , whose Famous Blue Raincoat she recorded in 2007 for the album Songs III: Bird On The Water , to her formative influences ; Nadler also interpreted some Cohen classics at the beginning of her career. Further cover versions are Springsteen's I'm on Fire , a version of Julia Ward Howe's The Battle Hymn of the Republic and Ballad to an Amber Lady by Pearls Before Swine , which is heavily modified in terms of atmosphere . Not only the origin of the last-named original illustrate its proximity to the ballad and folk tradition, but also the reference to traditional song material in general.

Her releases, partly produced by Greg Weeks ( Espers ), were initially released on Eclipse Records , and now she has also worked with the Beautiful Happiness , My Kung Fu , Peacefrog Records and Kemado Records labels . She goes on extensive concert tours, among others with José González , Jana Hunter and Mi and L'au . She occasionally appears without a backing band.

Discography (selection)

Albums

  • Ballads of Living and Dying (2004; Eclipse Records )
  • The Saga of Mayflower May (2005; Eclipse Records)
  • Songs III: Bird on the Water (2007; Kemado Records )
  • Little Hells (2009; Kemado Records)
  • Marissa Nadler (2011; Box Of Cedar Records)
  • The Sister (2012; Box Of Cedar Records)
  • July (2014; Sacred Bones Records)
  • Strangers (2016; Sacred Bones Records)
  • For My Crimes (2018; Sacred Bones Records)

Singles and EPs

  • Diamond Heart / Leather Made Shoes (2006; My Kung Fu)
  • River Of Dirt (2009; Kemado Records)
  • Drive (2014; Bella Union )
  • Was It A Dream (2014; Bella Union)
  • Bury Your Name (2016; Sacred Bones Records)
  • Katie I Know (2016; Bella Union)

Sampler contributions

  • Ballad to an Amber Lady on For the Dead in Space II: A Tribute to Tom Rapp (2003)
  • Judgment Day on Not Alone (2006)

With Xasthur

  • Portal of Sorrow (2010; Disharmonic Variations)

literature

  • Edwin Pouncey: Death Becomes Her. In: The Wire. August 2005, p. 10.

Web links

Commons : Marissa Nadler  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Nadler, Marissa
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American singer, guitarist and painter
DATE OF BIRTH April 5th 1981
PLACE OF BIRTH Washington, DC