Nina Nastasia
Biography
Nina Nastasia's Dogs (Socialist, 1999) revealed her masterful technique in telling stories. The Los Angeles-born but New York-based troubadour whispers tunes soaked in subdued, interior aching (not unlike Nico) and wraps them in understated arrangements for country/folk ensemble. The lyrics are epigrams (Underground) rather than chronicles, the music recalls nursery rhymes (Judy's In The Sandbox, A Dog's Life) rather than ponderous folk tales. The overall feeling is dark (even macabre in Roadkill) rather than bright; ominous (Too Much In Between, Nobody Knew Her) rather than entertaining.
For her second album, The Blackened Air (Touch & Go, 2002), Nina Nastasia, again, avails herself of string and wind instrumentation. The overall atmosphere is just a tad more tragic, while retaining the unique hypnotic power, with perhaps a few more explicit nods to folk and country music. Run All You opens as a Leonard Cohen dirge before soaring into a majestic waltz. A thick atmosphere of drama permeates the pounding heartbeat and the violin drones of This Is What It Is, and the terrifying sweetness of the lullaby Ugly Face, where the singer's doleful tone seems to be literally "weeping" the song.
Traditional country picking and yodeling support Oh My Stars, In The Graveyard, So Little. The orchestration is intriguing and often mesmerizing (as in the brief baroque square dance of All For You), but Nastasia seems to get closer to her true vision with the simplicity and sparseness of Desert Fly, with the dreamy and ghostly The Same Day, with the delicate and surreal tapestry of Ocean
The brief Run To Ruin (Touch & Go, 2003) is far less engaging than the first two albums. Vocals prevail when the going gets tough, as in You Her And Me, Superstar, The Body, but often sound (acoustic guitar, string section, dulcimer, accordion, piano) prevails, particularly in the shallow Superstar and Regrets Strings have a cathartic effect on the gloomy We Never Talked I Say That I Will Do, like the wind at the end of an overcast day. This album does not add anything to Nastasia's canon. It detracts a bit because it shows how much she relies on the arrangements, and how little her lyrics matter.