Freaky folker Marissa Nadler's new LP, on Sacred Bones... Expect surreal atmospheres and excellent songs. For more than 12 years Marissa Nadler has perfected her own take on the exquisitely sculpted gothic American songform. On her seventh full-length, ‘Strangers’, released on Bella Union, she has shed any self-imposed restrictions her earlier albums adhered to, stepped through a looking glass and created a truly monumental work. Her talent for powerfully juxtaposing the ominous and the beautiful is on full display. Turning her writing to more universal themes, Nadler dives deep into a surreal, apocalyptic dreamscape. Her lyrics touch upon the loneliness and despair of the characters that inhabit them. These muses are primal, fractured, disillusioned, delicate, and alone. They are the unified voice of this record, the titular ‘Strangers’. Once again partnered with producer Randall Dunn, Nadler has created an album equal in sonic quality to the apocalyptic lyrical tone that covers its 44 minutes. In places her voice and guitar play off subsonic synths, while elsewhere, a pulsing drumbeat launches the songs off into an intense, confrontational place.

Marissa Nadler sculpts an album of dark, ruinous beauty; gothic American folk wrapped in synths and orchestrations. Supremely elegant songwriting from one of the finest around.

By Adam