Marissa Nadler
“I’m still writing creepy music..
I’m still obsessed with death and love..”
By Jess Baggia
Photo by Myles Baer
F our years ago, psychedelic folk singer/songwriter Marissa Nadler met up with Northeast Performer for her very first magazine interview. “Things have changed a lot,” she muses, “but I still have the same aesthetic. Since that interview, she’s has also released three full-length albums, toured Europe extensively and gained thousands of fans. This year, critics and fans alike eagerly await the follow-up to Songs III: Bird on the Water — which will also be her fourth studio release with her new label, Kemado Records. After years of intensive writing and performing, Nadler stands poised to make her siren voice known all across the U.S. and yet she smiles, shrugs at the bluster and says, “To me, I’m not new. I’m sick of me!”
Art was always deeply infused in the blood of the twenty-six year old Needham, Mass. native, but during her youth, music was an outlet and never an ambition. “I went to art school to become a painter,” she explains. “So, I had maybe five or six guitar lessons in my whole life and no vocal training. It started as a hobby.”
Upon reaching the competitive confines of art school, her then hobby became an entirely new source of freedom. “Imagine,” she says, “for your whole life art was a pleasure zone — a creative outlet — and then suddenly it becomes work. That’s when I realized I needed a new outlet.” Along with her new artistic outlet, she also found her trademark singing style: lush, reverb-drenched vocals lost in sad, epic storytelling songs.
Strange and melancholic, with a nod to her past diet of classic folk and rock artists such as Joni Mitchell and Neil Young, her music washes over with just the right touch of unpredictability. It’s a sound she’s cultivated for the last six years — tuning into the softer, sweeter registers of her voice, coming to terms with “pretty” music, while always remaining on the outskirts of the entirely accessible. “I had such a fear of being ordinary! At the time, I was pretentious.” I was scared to sound like every other girl with a guitar,” she recalls.
Despite a continuous, albeit painstakingly gradual, climb to notoriety, Nadler maintains a detachment from the overall process. “Sometimes I think I’m way too emotionally fragile for all this,” she explains. In fact, she’s tempted to become a reclusive recording artist — putting out records the best way she knows how and avoiding the touring/performance route altogether.
“I have really, really, really bad stage fright,” she confesses. “I get physically sick before I perform. I need to take medication. In fact, I can’t get on stage without a drink!” She communicates a violent fear far more crippling than the typical pre-stage jitters. “Even though I do hundreds of shows a year, I still make them turn off the lights,” she adds with a smile. “Lots of musicians have stage fright, even Carly Simon!”
To supportive critics who hail her Americana-infused contemporary take on the ballad, she responds modestly, “I was never like, ‘I’m going to write a ballad.’ I never set out to write traditional songs and ballads. It may be genetic memory — some people have verse/chorus structures ingrained in them.” In fact, it may be she stumbled upon the ballad’s modern condition solely for her own coping purposes: “It’s a way for me to deal with the problems in my life. I don’t write songs to write a classic record or to be famous,” she explains. “The character theme is a writing device. It frees you up to say more gutsy things when you write in third person.”
From her first Performer feature years ago to this, her second, the symbolic impression of a career coming full circle is not lost on her, but Nadler approaches this interview as she does her career — with reservation and a confessional air. She smiles dangerously, “I want you to know, the first interview I ever did — I lied!” She laughs at the quirks of her past persona, shaking her head slightly, “I wanted to make myself more interesting, I suppose. I read about how Bob Dylan used to mythologize himself, so I said I was a trained opera singer.” It appears that these days Nadler embraces her identity with confidence.
“I’m just trying to write good songs,” she explains. Having spent the last few months preparing for the recording studio, Nadler maintains an outward calmness despite the building pressure. “This is the first record where I feel like the stakes are high,” she confesses. “I feel like this record might get slaughtered and I think, ‘Oh God, what if it’s not that good?’”
The business of music, the stresses of performance, and the devastatingly solitary lifestyle are enough to bring any artist to their knees with worry. Making no secret of her own career toils, Nadler has a simple for answer for her undying perseverance. “It was and IS a dream of mind to make it as an artist and the fact that I’m making a living at it is amazing.”
“To emotionally connect with people through music makes it worth it. I think even the biggest artists have self-doubt,” she adds. Doubts notwithstanding, Nadler has a set of major career goals she plans to tackle wholeheartedly.
Step one: get music in a major motion picture. “I don’t think I have standout singles as much as I do the kind of music that is just made for the movies,” she explains. Step two: get a band. “A large part of my stage fright comes from playing alone,” she says. “I think having people on stage with you to help flesh out your songs also leaves some room for making mistakes.” Step three? Perhaps for Nadler that would be maintaining a semblance of routine. With a spring European tour on the horizon and a 2008 album release to promote, Nadler’s schedule is anything but humdrum.
Marissanadler.com
www.myspace.com/songsoftheend |
