Marissa Nadler
July (out now on Sacred Bones)
It’s difficult to write about the 32 year-old’s reflective folk without evoking images of dusty attics, tucked-away closets, and old cardboard boxes in the garage. While her music certainly has that antique/heirloom feel, it’s mostly hard not to use the aforementioned modifiers because her music feels so homey and domestic. That’s not to say it’s boring, rather it plays on the reality that often the most fascinating, revealing stories are the ones that lay in the homes that we live in and the imperfect hearts that we have.
Nadler spends the disc’s 11 tracks ruminating on those kinds of feelings, lacing her mellifluous, haunting vocal over ornate, spare, meticulously-crafted chamber folk arraignments. Though the Massachusetts-native fixes her gaze outward on elegiac first single, “Dead City Emily,” much of July is decidedly inward-facing, evoking the reflective nature of winter. The overall feeling of the record is perhaps best summed by the disc’s heart-wrenching finale, where Nadler signs off with “Maybe it’s the weather, but I’ve got nothing in my heart.” While dispiriting on paper, there is real hope in her voice. There is hope in the transient nature of the season, and there is hope blooming of new flowers just around the corner. Feels about right on this 28-degree, February day.
