Marissa Nadler unveils striking video for “Janie In Love”
Following rave reviews for her new album Strangers, released last month on Bella Union, and a sold-out UK tour, Marissa Nadler has unveiled a striking video for “Janie In Love”, one of the LP’s many stand-out tracks. The stop-motion video was crafted entirely by Nadler herself at her home studio in Boston and employs a dramatic grayscale that, like her songs, creates depth and beauty out of darkness, light, and subtle shades in between. Clay renderings of faces morph and dissolve to form abstract images of wildlife and homes while Nadler herself basks in the sunlight peeking through the trees of a nearby New England forest.
“Marissa Nadler is someone still committed to building the grand musical palaces. Acoustic Americana of epic proportions… Strangers expands her sonic palette even more, with piano, strings and a rhythm section, yet her voice achieves grandeur through subtlety and understatement.” Uncut – 8/10
“Imbued with filmic ebb and flow, Nadler has moved forward with a delicate yet steel-spined album of intimate soliloquies. If David Lynch were looking to soundtrack dreamlike disassociation he need look no further.” MOJO – 4 Stars ****
“It would probably be a good idea to lash yourself to the mast before listening to Strangers, because if there’s a singer around these days who could lure sailors to their doom against the rocks, it’s Marissa Nadler.” Sunday Times (Album of the Week)
“Here’s something dark to succumb to. Marissa Nadler has a voice you’d happily take intravenously, one part tremulous country siren, one part cabaret chanteuse. You feel you’ve discovered a portal between this world and the next.” Evening Standard – 4 Stars ****
“Marissa Nadler is a singer blessed with an extraordinary voice… The music fits vaguely into the genre of dream pop, with enough beauty to get under your skin.”
The Times – 4 Stars ****
“On this seventh album, Marissa Nadler has created her masterpiece. These brilliantly bruised soundscapes go psyche deep in lyrical content and sonic exploration… Its staggering.”
The Mirror – 4 Stars ****
“Another faultless collection from Nadler, fast becoming one of the most distinctive voices in American music.” Record Collector – 4 Stars ****
“Ever-haunting gothic folkie Nadler opens new sonic horizons. Bluesy guitar, synths, strings and percussion add extra heft to her beguiling explorations of the human condition, still carried by a voice as pure as the driven snow.” The Sun – 4 Stars ****
“This is a true epic of love and longing wreathed in the dry ice of synth swirl and bluesy guitar, underpinned by songs of startling beauty.” Monocle
For more than 12 years Marissa Nadler has perfected her own take on the exquisitely sculpted gothic American songform. On her seventh full-length, Strangers, she has shed any self-imposed restrictions her earlier albums adhered to, stepped through a looking glass, and created a truly monumental work.
Turning her writing to more universal themes, Nadler dives deep into a surreal, apocalyptic dreamscape. Her lyrics touch upon the loneliness and despair of the characters that inhabit them. These muses are primal, fractured, disillusioned, delicate, and alone. They are the unified voice of this record, the titular “strangers.”
Once again partnered with July producer Randall Dunn (Sunn O))), Earth, Black Mountain) Nadler has created an album equal in sonic quality to the apocalyptic lyrical tone that covers its 44 minutes. In places her voice and guitar play off subsonic synths, while elsewhere, a pulsing drumbeat launches the songs off into an intense, confrontational place.
Strangers is out now on Bella Union in the UK & Europe and Sacred Bones in the US.