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subscribe to style file blog via RSSMarissa Nadler: Weird As Folk
April 7, 2009 11:34 am
A folk singer isn’t supposed to be high-tech. In the popular imagination, the folkie travels a lonely road from coffeehouse to coffeehouse, with only her guitar to keep her company. Her songs are stripped down, her sound acoustic, her soul bared. She smells like patchouli. That’s the idea, anyway. But Marissa Nadler is shifting the folkie paradigm: Though the six-string balladeering on Nadler’s fourth album, Little Hells (Kemado), binds it to the traditions of American folk, the ghostly overdubbing and sharp, multi-track production Nadler has introduced this time out make her music feel commandingly new. “I never set out to be a typical singer-songwriter,” Nadler explains. “What I always wanted was this dreamy, hazy feeling. And I think each record has gotten closer to the amalgam I’ve had in mind.” Indeed, Little Hells, released in late February, owes as much of a debt to shoegazing bands such as Mazzy Star and My Bloody Valentine as it does to Nadler’s more anticipatable references, like Leonard Cohen. (Imagine Cohen as a pretty girl with a blog, a distortion pedal, and a drum machine, and you’d be in striking range of Nadler’s haunting appeal, in fact.) Tonight, the Boston-based singer launches a two-month tour with a gig at Hotel Café in Los Angeles. Here, Nadler talks to Style.com about her latest folk makeover.
You studied illustration and painting at the Rhode Island School of Design, which isn’t anything I’d normally bring up at the start of an interview, except that your songs seem to have this very painterly quality. Is that a conscious thing?
I think it’s just the way I see the world. As a child I was always painting, and I still see the world in that visual way. I write from that. In a song, I like to set a scene, paint colors, create textures. And a subject matter. All those qualities that paintings have.
There’s a pretty serious music scene in Providence, where RISD is, and in Boston, too. But your music doesn’t seem to track with any the sounds that tend to come out of those places.
I’ve never really fit in, in either of those cities. I mean, I was in Providence for six years, because I got a master’s in Art Education at RISD, too, and the whole time I was there I felt like I was too weird for the normal stuff, and too normal, I guess, for the weird stuff. So I just started listening to western music on my own.
Why western?
Just because I liked the way they sang. Sammi Smith, Patsy Cline…and blues, too, people like Leadbelly.
Those names are pretty canonical—songwriters with a “folk” label often cite them. But Little Hells really doesn’t feel like a folk record.
I wanted to take some risks this time—I’d made three records previously that sort of were what they were, so this time I was trying to build up more of a sound. A soundscape. There’s a lot of production on this record. And I’ve added percussion and things like that.
Did the songs change a lot in studio?
Some did. “Mary Come Alive,” for example—that turned into this kind of eighties synth-pop track. Which was unexpected. But it’s interesting to see the way one song can take on so many different characters.
Now that you’re heading out on tour, are you stripping the songs back down?
My West Coast headlining tour is with a full band, whereas my dates in the Midwest with Handsome Family will be me and one other person…I guess what I’m trying to say is, it depends. What’s nice is that this is the first time I won’t be alone. It’s hard to break the preconceived notions when you’re up on stage, just girl and guitar. But if you show up with a bunch of dudes behind you, you’re valid.
That’s why you’re bringing a backing band on tour? To throw people off the “freak folk” scent?
Well, I like the extra instrumentation, too. But, yeah, I’ve never felt too comfortable with the characterization of my music as “folk,” or “freak folk,” or whatever. I mean, I think everybody chafes at those labels. Though I do get that you have to stick a label on something in order to market it to an audience. That’s just a fact of life as an artist.
Is there studio-created stuff on this record that you can’t reproduce on stage?
Well, this was the first time I’d tried to write three- or four-part harmonies, to sing all myself. You can do that in the studio—sing with yourself. I have to say, the realization of the harmonies was what made me really happy listening back to the record. But I couldn’t re-create that live, because, you know, it’s all me.
tags: Marissa Nadler
lovely interview
i like that she mixes acoustic sets with full band shows
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By loveismontreal on 04/7/09 at 11:50 am