- Marissa Nadler
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Marissa Nadler Born April 5, 1981
Washington D.C., United StatesOrigin Needham, Massachusetts, United States Genres Folk, dream pop Occupations Singer, songwriter, musician, painter Instruments Guitar, piano, keyboards, banjo Years active 2000–present Website Marissa Nadler's official website Marissa Nadler (born April 5, 1981) is an American dream-folk singer-songwriter and fine artist based in Boston.
Contents
Early life
Marissa Nadler was exposed to art at a young age through her mother Pamela, an abstract painter, and her older brother Stuart, a guitarist and writer. Nadler studied painting at Rhode Island School of Design and was an art teacher in Harlem, New York for a short time. However, music soon became her favored artistic outlet. As a teenager, she learned to play guitar from her brother in a style similar to cotton picking, playing a steady bass pattern with the thumb and filling out syncopated rhythms with the index finger.[1][2] After her brother left his guitar at home and went off to college, she taught herself to play and began writing songs. While exploring old artistic techniques such as illustration, painting, bookbinding, woodcarving and encaustic painting, she also began to further hone her songwriting craft. She subsequently recorded an album titled "Autumn Rose", as well as another EP, both of which have never been released.
Music career
Marissa Nadler released her first album, Ballads of Living and Dying, on Eclipse Records in 2004; her follow-up, The Saga of Mayflower May, was released in July 2005. Both records were distributed in the US by Eclipse Records, and by the UK label Beautiful Happiness in Europe. Eclipse Records' Ed Hardy, who runs a mostly vinyl record label formerly in the desert of Bullhead City Arizona, is credited by Marissa herself as having brought her into the musical world. Marissa released her third record Songs III: Bird on the Water on Peacefrog Records in Europe on March 12, 2007. The album was released in the US and Canada on August 12, 2007 by Kemado Records. Songs III: Bird on the Water was nominated for two PLUG awards in 2008: best female artist of the year, and best Americana record of the year. Marissa won "Outstanding Singer-Songwriter of the Year" in the 2008 Boston Music Awards, with three nominations altogether.[citation needed]
Her fourth full-length record, Little Hells, was released March 3, 2009, receiving high praise from many critics including 4 Star reviews from magazines such as Mojo, Rolling Stone in France and Germany, Uncut, Q. It received an 8.3 from Pitchforkmedia.com, with critic Grayson Currin writing, "Surrounded by little else but her own melancholy, Nadler sums up her career's existential despair: 'Ghosts and lovers/ They will haunt you for a while,' she sings. And while they do, Little Hells suggests through 10 of Nadler's best songs yet, the sadness will either kill you or keep you going." [3]
In early 2010 she contributed to the black metal project Xasthur, with the final album "Portal of Sorrow".[4]
On June 14, 2011, an eponymous record was released worldwide on Nadler's own label, Box of Cedar Records. This record will be followed by a four song EP entitled Rain Arrangement.
Musical style
Her voice was described by the popular online music website Pitchfork Media as "a voice you would follow straight into Hades". In the Boston Globe, her voice and music is described: "She has a voice that, in mythological times, could have lured men to their deaths at sea, an intoxicating soprano drenched in gauzy reverb that hits bell-clear heights, lingers, and tapers off like rings of smoke. Hardly anyone considers Nadler a folk musician." [2]
Music critics describe Nadler's songs as having American Gothic leanings; her stories often take place in an imagined, idealistic time with a cast of characters of her own creation and introspective themes of lonliness and grief. Her characters sometimes recur, even across multiple albums. Such examples include "Mayflower May", a self-professed alter-ego, and "Silvia", a purported reference to Sylvia Plath. Yet, in recent years, it has emerged that the characters are less make-believe than listeners thought and are based on real people, and their real lives, which she revealed in an interview with the music website Stereogum.com [5] Her links to American Gothic are reinforced by "Annabelle Lee," the last song on her debut album, Ballads of Living and Dying, which puts the poem of the same title by Edgar Allan Poe to a musical backing.
Singing in a mezzo-soprano, the foundation of her songs are her acoustic guitar, often accompanied by a variety of instruments and an ambient reverb-laden production. She has been known to play in open tunings on several songs. Her influences include Nina Simone, Tom Waits, Patti Smith, Fleetwood Mac, Joni Mitchell, Kate Bush, and Leonard Cohen.
Discography
Albums
- Ballads of Living and Dying (2004)
- The Saga of Mayflower May (July 2005)
- Songs III: Bird on the Water (March 2007)
- Little Hells (March 2009)
- Marissa Nadler (June 14, 2011)
Singles, EPs and demos
- Four-Track Recordings, Outtakes (2005)
- "Diamond Heart"/"Leather Made Shoes" single (May 2006)
- "Diamond Heart"/"Dying Breed" single (February 2007)
- "Bird on Your Grave" single (music video only) (October 2007)
- Ivy and the Clovers - Promotional CD sold on tour (2007)
- Rain Arrangement- Upcoming LP to be released in February 2012
References
- ^ http://wearsthetrousers.com/2009/03/20/marissa-nadler-little-hells-2009/
- ^ a b http://www.boston.com/news/globe/living/articles/2006/09/15/through_music_she_builds_her_own_myth/
- ^ http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/12813-little-hells
- ^ http://metal-archives.com/release.php?id=269609
- ^ http://stereogum.com/archives/mp3/the-gum-drop-lxxii-hear-new-marissa-nadler-win-a-n_047101.html/
- Edwin Pouncey: “Death becomes her”, The Wire, August 2005, p. 10.
- Dickenson, J. Andrew: "Saga of the Siren", Urban Guitar, August 2006
- Reed, James: "Through music, she builds her own myth", The Boston Globe, September 15, 2006
- Currin, Grayson: Pitchfork Media "Little Hells Album Review" [1], 2009
- Kourtesis, Danielle: "Marissa Nadler’s Haunting Little Hells", Flavorwire.com, February 20, 2009
External links
Categories:- 1981 births
- Living people
- American painters
- American singer-songwriters
- Psych folk musicians
- Musicians from Massachusetts
- Massachusetts culture
- People from Washington, D.C.
- Rhode Island School of Design alumni
- Women painters
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