For your next dawn awakening
This week's artist is for fans of mist, fog and words like "lupine"
Marissa Nadler: An Unhappy Hour
A soundtrack for one/all of the following:
Thick clouds of smoke.
Victorian street lamps that could explode at any moment like billowing, shattered glass hearts.
Ghost ships on calm pearl green seas, being enveloped by fog.
A spider trapped in amber.
Grainy archive film of feral black cats in the woods.
Ominous silhouettes on a misty moor.
Stop motion (misc).
Dickens street scenes.
Long-long-long shadows...
All of the best-of-the-best black & off-white & dark-dark grey “gothic” “poetic” cliches and tales of witchery could be written on Marissa Nadler’s tombstone, such is the rich world she evokes in her songs. And yet, she both is and isn’t a character of 1500 folklore, her story written in dried blood... In fact, after years of watching her music and being enchanted/haunted by her live shows, it wouldn’t surprise me to find her face in the pages of some red leather-bound book excavated from a Parisian catacomb. I also wouldn’t be surprised to discover she’s the first ghost to release a catalogue of music... but I digress.
What Marissa is is one of the most quietly aflame musicians of the 21st century. Out of time, maybe, but pouring a milk jug of silk worm songs into unsuspecting ears and all you need do is lean back and let them wriggle around, gently. Ominously. Majestically.
“Into the web
To go back
To the days of color…”
What I’m trying to say is that if you’re at all drawn toward the dreamiest darkness, you need to wander into Marissa’s serpentine, labyrinthine, and friendly lupine spellscape... spellscape?! What have you done to me Marissa...
All of which is to say that if you’re not a fan already and her cover of Elliott Smith’s Pitseleh hasn’t already greeted thine charred black heart, well, welcome...
And yeah, mostly I’d recommend going for a walk in the heavy dawn light with this week’s playlist of her songs as your soundtrack.
Support the artist: There’s lots more on Marissa’s Bandcamp https://marissanadler.bandcamp.com
Related read: Marissa Nadler on Elliott Smith for Drowned in Sound.