{"id":2475,"date":"2014-03-06T08:17:06","date_gmt":"2014-03-06T14:17:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thesenseofdoubt.com\/?p=2475"},"modified":"2014-05-06T02:56:07","modified_gmt":"2014-05-06T01:56:07","slug":"marissa-nadler-july-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/box2305.temp.domains\/~thesent5\/marissa-nadler-july-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Marissa Nadler \u2013 July"},"content":{"rendered":"

Marissa Nadler \u2013 July<\/span><\/h2>\n
February 2014, Sacred Bones<\/span><\/h5>\n
This review was originally published for Thebizzniz.com<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/h5>\n
Alejandro De Luna<\/span><\/h5>\n

Marissa Nadler <\/b>does not mind being vulnerable and to show her more fragile side. Praised by critics but still overshadowed commercially since 2004, Nadler\u00b4s<\/b> music is honest and comes from the darkest corners of the soul.<\/p>\n

In July <\/i>\u2013 her sixth full-length album \u2013\u00a0Nadler\u00b4s<\/b> phantasmagorical soprano-like tones serve to exemplify the vulnerability in her lyrics that portray tragic in common scenarios: heartbreak, desolation, a fateful separation and despair, but that paradoxically opens the door for better times. With Joni Mitchell <\/b>and Leonard Cohen<\/b> as inspirations; with a guitar that rests in 70s folk music but with a dark background that could easily stick to Gothic and with a melancholic voice that leaves Lana del Rey<\/b> drifting in the blue, July<\/i> is an album worth exploring. Some might say that you should judge a book by its cover and with an album like this, the visual aesthetic perfectly portrays the feelings of its author: the desolation that fills her dark past and present covered by black bricks and a bright window behind anticipating a fuzzy but promising future.<\/p>\n

\"Marissa<\/a><\/p>\n

In July<\/i> there is a central theme: a lost love, a person who is not coming back and that Marissa Nadler<\/b> recalls with nostalgia and sadness over eleven tracks. Tracks like “Drive”, exemplify these vague memories that nostalgia provides; moments that are gone as in another utopian portrait of the past in “1923”, featuring an acoustic guitar that evokes Leonard Cohen\u00b4s <\/b>early bohemian-like work.<\/p>\n

Accompanied by a claustrophobic sound, full of vocal reverbs and ambient textures, the lyrics spit the pain of Nadler\u00b4s<\/b> past: ‘I died when you left’ (\u201cWe are coming back”); \u2018I do not give a damn about the way \/ Colors on the trees change from red to green\u2019 (“Dead city, Emily\u201d); ‘I hardly think about you anymore \/ Except When I see the water and the sand on the ocean floor’ (“Anyone Else”) – that sounds like an acoustic version of Chelsea Wolfe\u00b4s<\/b> goth or ‘I called you when I was drunk all the time’ (“Holiday in”) \u2013 Simon & Garfunkel<\/b>-like guitar.<\/p>\n

In “I’ve got your name”, Nadler<\/b> walks away from the dark and thick folk that stuffs the disc and with a voice and piano reminiscent of Lana del Rey<\/b>, our dark introspective hero explores other textures evocative to 50\u00b4s and 60\u00b4s Americana but without leaving behind the strong introspective content of the album. As in “Drive”, Nadler <\/b>takes again long roads and cars as the scenery for the collection of her memoirs (‘Drove down 95, put on my eyes \/ In the rearviewmirror as I enter New York \/ You stopped calling my out my way’).<\/p>\n