Review Summary: apocalypse now
On her last LP, 2014’s exquisite
July, Boston-based Marissa Nadler spun striking, raw songs that relayed a graphic account of a relationship gone awry. It tracked, more-or-less, the year after the break, and traveled through anger, shock, dismay, loneliness, and pride, and not necessarily in that order. It was Nadler’s best record yet, with dense, thick production courtesy of usual-metalhead Randall Dunn, which may seem like an odd way to describe a mostly acoustic album that sounded like a sleepy, sad watercolor. But it is also an appropriate marriage of two worlds: Nadler’s songs have an emotional intensity and an approach to lyricism that meshes well with Dunn’s usual curriculum vitae, and it really peaked on
July.
Well, here comes
Strangers, Nadler’s 7th full-length album (or 8th if you count the mini-album
The Sister). It may come as a surprise to fans of her last record (re: me), that in more ways than one,
Strangers is superior to its predecessor. Here, Nadler finds herself at a more content place romantically, and so she turns her dark, emotional gaze elsewhere: namely, the end of the world, and all the bleakness, confusion, and desolation that comes along with such a heady topic.
Beginning with the sole piano track, “Divers of the Dust” starts the album off on a very appropriate foot. Lyrically, it gives us a perplexed, eerily calm and almost random account of things beginning to fall apart. It feels almost Dadaist in its impressionistic quality. There really aren’t too many other spots on the album that feel so unstable, even if it is one of the quietest songs here. “Katie I Know,” one of Nadler’s best songs yet, follows with a tale of a friend who does not seem so familiar anymore. It’s terrifying in its gentle acknowledgment of how time and crisis can change even the ones we hold most dear.
This album covers a lot of ground, both lyrically and musically It is quite possibly Nadler’s beefiest record to date, with arrangements full of electric guitar licks, distortion wails, pedal steel, strings, and even more drums than usual. Randall Dunn returns as producer and it feels like an even better fit this time around. The wall of fuzz that slowly encroaches on the depression anthem “Hungry is the Ghost” feels practically groundbreaking, as does the enormous burst of electric guitar in first single, “Janie in Love,” which tells a startling story likening a friend careening recklessly in love to a terrible storm. The title track is a marvelous, sinister concoction, which, thanks to its searing guitar and crying pedal steel, can only be described as “doom country.” (Can we make that a thing?)
This may be an album about the end of the world, but it does not fixate so doggedly on that as to come up short on ideas or become tedious. “All The Colors of the Dark,” by far the brightest melody here, has a gently buoyant rhythm to it that makes it stick out from its gloomier brethren. “Shadow Show Diane,” one of the weirdest songs Nadler has ever penned, details a woman secretly watching another woman through her window. That all being said, there are some good old apocalypse songs as well, most notably “Nothing Feels the Same,” which tells the heartbreaking story of someone going back to where their house used to be, only unable to actually find it, thanks to the utter desolation.
This is a bleak album, but it might also be Nadler’s strongest. Its lyrics cover topics that feel new for her, and her singing (and harmony skills) and guitar playing only gets better with each release. It might not pack the upfront emotional punch of
July, but it makes up for it in spades. As the beautiful “Dissolve” closes out the record with someone floating away at the very bitter end of life on earth, Nadler sings, “I’m just another body in this town.” But make no mistake: Nadler is not just another musician. She’s the real deal, and this album is ample proof.
Final rating: 9.1
Key tracks: Katie I Know, Hungry is the Ghost, All the Colors of the Dark, Strangers, Janie In Love
