Listening to Marissa Nadler‘s music is like being hit by a slow-motion explosion.
At first, you may remain indifferent and perhaps a little bored by these sparse, almost desert-like folk songs. And you may allow yourself to be distracted while the music fills the room and your ears.
The magic of Marissa Nadler
Then, slowly, something happens. Something begins to circulate until this music takes hold of us to the point where we can no longer do without it. We cannot explain how this magic happens. But the fact is that Nadler arrives in 2025 with her tenth album after more than twenty years of career, which is a truly remarkable achievement.
Marissa Nadler hits harder
The album was produced by Nadler herself. And all the tracks are played and sung by her, accompanied only by Milky Burgess, her long-time collaborator and life partner, who creates atmospheres with synth and guitar. This new work opens with “It Hits Harder,” where a languid melody on acoustic guitar deceives us, because a subtle uneasiness creeps in the background with some synthesizer notes, reminiscent of Pink Floyd solutions so dear to Nadler.
A distant reverberation
“Bad Dreams Summertime” is a song that gently lulls you, where a distant reverberation of the voice joins the main melody, creating a dreamlike effect. The use of reverb and overlapping voices recurs very often in this album, creating sonic breadth and fueling an evocative atmosphere. This is also the case in the song “You Called Her Camellia,” where slide guitar notes are added, giving it an American folk touch. But of an America seen from afar, through old yellowed photos and blurred images.
Walking in with small but measured steps
“Smoke Screen Selene” takes us to the edge of an invisible abyss, along whose edges Nadler walks with small but measured steps. The title track “New Radiations” evokes Nico‘s “All Tomorrow’s Parties,” while a psychedelic sound pushes us toward the West Coast that Lana Del Rey dreamed of in many of her songs and that we find here in a sort of hypnotic, bewitching mixture.
Floating above a non-existent sea
A track like “If It’s An Illusion” would probably have appealed to David Lynch, with its sweet and disturbing pace. While the following “Hatchet Man” simply enchants us with its country-flavored melody. We return to a dreamlike world with “Light Years,” with its distant, expansive sounds, floating above a non-existent sea, lapped by the California sun. “Weightless Above The Water” could be the missing link between Grace Slick‘s “Surrealistic Pillow” and Chelsea Wolfe‘s American gothic in “Birth of Violence.”
Back to the roots for Marissa Nadler
Marissa Nadler‘s songwriting returns in all its sweet and mysterious beauty with “To Be The Moon King”. And especially in the final track “Sad Satellite,” a crystalline ballad that, in its simplicity, encompasses a universe of sound, a subtractive journey that brings the singer-songwriter back to her roots and reveals, in its essentiality, a unique talent.
Tracklist
- It Hits Harder
- Bad Dreams Summertime
- You Called Her Camellia
- Smoke Screen Selene
- New Radiations
- If It’s An Illusion
- Hatchet Man
- Light Years
- Weightless Above The Water
- To Be The Moon King
- Sad Satellite