Marissa Nadler
Posted: Wed Sep 12, 2007 9:00 am
http://news.bostonherald.com/entertainm ... id=1030634
--- She covered "Famous blue raincoat" on her album "Folk off" (USA 2006).
She grew up in Needham, attended Rhode Island School of Design and broke into the music industry via open-mike nights.
Yet Marissa Nadler is a virtual unknown in New England, though she is being hailed in Old England as a musical treasure. Raves in the British press (“uncommonly lovely . . . hard to get out of your head” - the London Guardian; “a bright talent . . . can’t wait to hear more” - BBC’s Radio One) paved the way for extensive European touring during the past two years.
She recorded her latest album, “Song III: Bird on the Water,” for English label Peacefrog, and it was so well-received that Kemado bought it for U.S. release.
A 26-year-old songwriter with a siren’s voice, she has an eerie stylistic resemblance to early Leonard Cohen, and her psychedelic folk has begun to garner attention stateside for its unique sound and rare artistic flair. (Allmusic.com dubs her new album “among the most arresting recordings of 2007.”)
In the midst of a three-month tour winding toward tonight’s homecoming gig at the Middle East in Cambridge, Nadler is anxious to reintroduce herself to all those friends, neighbors and former Needham High classmates who haven’t been tuned to the BBC.
“I’m really looking forward to it - and so are my parents,” Nadler said from the road. “I haven’t really played a lot in Boston at all. I don’t think I have a very big following there.”
While she plays solo with acoustic guitar and quotes Edgar Allan Poe and Pablo Neruda in her writing, Nadler bristles at being labeled a folk singer.
“I’m a big Leonard Cohen fan - early Leonard Cohen,” she said, “but I don’t consider myself a folk singer. You know, I’m into grunge as much as anyone, and I was never into the coffeehouse scene. I just wanted to make ‘spacey’ music.”
As for avoiding playing the traditional Boston stages for emerging artists, such as Club Passim, Nadler laughed. “Actually,” she said, “I was never invited to play there.”
She may be a little too gothic for the Passim crowd. Her attention to dark subjects - death and separation - in her haunting soprano has, in fact, earned her an unwanted spot in the so-called Weird America movement.
“I guess I’d rather be thought of as weird than normal, but I hate all those tags,” she said. “Death is a part of life. . . . I don’t think it comes up in music a lot, so it sticks out.”
In Nadler’s case “weird” is a euphemism for unique. She found that “spacey” sound she desired with reverb and by multi-tracking her voice, further clouding the folk illusion.
“I was a big fan of 4AD, Throwing Muses and Belly - Tanya Donelly, all that reverb stuff,” Nadler said. “And that’s kind of where my sound came from.”
Now, with her first U.S. tour under way, the question is where her sound is going next. Those stodgy Brits may have to come to grips with the fact that Americans are catching on.
But I shall desist from such nomenclaturistic hurling.
