Marissa Nadler, Songs III: Bird on the Water (Peacefrog)

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Marissa Nadler sings like a girl Bob Dylan might have created and longingly described on an album like "Blood on the Tracks". She´s fascinating, she´s intelligent, she´s attractive, she´s utterly unique, but words will never really succeed in capturing her true essence. Instead you should just listen and listen closely.

A very special voice, a very spectral voice, which somehow conveys something completely sui generis and never-before-heard and yet seems as timeless as the act of singing songs itself. An effect the late Canadian singer Stan Rogers was adept at achieving.

From the very first strophe of "Diamond Heart" you´re hopelessly entangled, possessed by the voice and determined to delve deep into the text, sometimes so straight-forward, sometimes so impenetrable. And truly pretty, then exhiliratingly sad in turn.

Nadler has almost simultaneously released a collection of "b-sides and other lost songs", or "compilation tracks and miscellaneous oddities", depending on what side of the cover you read. Now, Marissa has recorded three wonderful albums, nary a flubbed note or forced rhyme. So the question is, has she ever recorded a bad song at all? Since "Ivy and the Clovers" (Eclipse) contains one-offs for magazines, compilations and flip-sides, this would be the place to look for slip-up, right?

(Thirty minutes and ten seconds later...)

Nope. Nothing is less than glistening, nothing is just phoned in. Just as meekly profound, beautiful and even sexy as anything else in her growing, stellar catalogue. "Conjuring Spirit Worlds" reads like a lament written by Ophelia to Hamlet before taking her final dip. More proof that Marissa Nadler is probably the most interesting female vocalist currently evolving on the North American continent.

http://www.marissanadler.com