 On the eve of her debut Australian tour, MARISSA NADLER temporarily takes leave from the realities of packing to talk to ANDREW TUTTLE. Good things come to those who wait. Whilst American avant-folk singer-songwriter Marissa Nadler has to date slipped under the radar in this island continent, word of her haunting voice, softly spoken persona and minimal tunes of love and death are slowly making waves in Australia.
Originally released in the states in 2005, Nadler’s sophomore album The Saga Of Mayflower May is finally seeing a local release through Melbourne’s Unstable Ape Records, and Nadler’s making her visit to these shores to showcase her deceptively gentle tunes to audiences along the east coast. Not one to be creatively stifled or dwelling on the past, in addition to tracks from The Saga Of Mayflower May and her 2004 debut Ballads of Living and Dying Nadler is preparing to perform a series of new pieces from an as yet untitled upcoming album release. Although rather shy and careful with her answers, Nadler states that her upcoming album, “is darker and more psyched out. There is more instrumentation than the other two [albums]. This one will be called something with birds and bodies, but I can’t quite decide on a name yet; it will come to me. The common themes are lost love and death, as usual.”
Whilst audiences as a result will be unfamiliar with many of Nadler’s pieces during her upcoming tour, the payoff is that these songs will be performed with a vital freshness, without the pressures of time and repeated performance dulling the impact for both artist and audience.
Although renowned as an extremely competent lyricist in her own right, Nadler is not above re-interpreting the words of other creative minds. On Ballads Of Living and Dying Nadler reworks Edgar Allen Poe’s poem Annabelle Lee within her own musical framework, justifying the choice by questioning “Who can read the poem and not want to sing it? It is so songlike [and] lilting [that] I couldn't help but just make a melody out of it.”
As well as Poe, Nadler has also put the words Chilean poet and Nobel Prize winner Pablo Neruda to song. Rather than laziness or an attempt at taking credit for someone else’s work, Nadler’s appropriation of Poe and Neruda’s works harks back to a time where the tradition of continuing the legacy of folk songs was more important than the individual artist performing the song at that time.
For her first Australian tour, Nadler will be performing in solo format. However, Nadler promises a remarkable array of instrumentation, focusing on “six string guitar” with the odd appearance from “12 string guitar, the banjo and some toy piano.”
Nadler is at pains to explain that whatever her musical accompaniment, “The most important instrument in my music is my voice. The music is completely reliant on the vocal qualities.”
Marissa Nadler plays The Troubadour Friday June 2. The Saga Of Mayflower May is out now on Unstable Ape.
|
| Comments are submitted for possible publication on the condition that they may be edited. Poster's IP addresses are logged. |
|
Be first to comment on this article
