Marissa Nadler

The self-professed “shy girl” spreads her wings and takes flight with her newest release, Songs III: Bird on the Water

By Katy Henriksen
Published: September 12th, 2007 | 12:00am

The pressed tin–covered and chandelier-lit confines of the Sound Fix Cafe in Williamsburg prove a proper setting for Marissa Nadler’s Songs III: Bird on the Water record release party on August 6, 2007. The intimacy is magnified by the standing-room-only crowd of bearded boys and canvas-toting gals sipping Brooklyn Lagers, PBRs, and poured drinks out of mason jars, as well as by the sultry air that wafts in whenever the front door opens.

“Thanks so much for coming,” Nadler says, just before starting her set with “Diamond Heart,” the opening track from Songs III, a piece she says she worked on in a New Jersey hotel room the night before recording it. Standing on the small stage with her guitar, she plays a couple measures but isn’t satisfied with the balance and stops to adjust the reverb with the sound technician. When she starts again, her voice immediately envelopes the entire room with her signature molasses-coated, slightly quivering vibrato.

In an interview a week prior to tonight’s event, Nadler admitted that it took years to develop her voice. “I stopped trying. That’s when it happened,” she says. “I let myself sing naturally. I think I was a songwriter first and foremost. The singing and playing came later. The whole thing was that I was too shy to sing, ever.”

Although her third full-length has been out in the United Kingdom for a year now on the Peacefrog label, it has just seen U.S. distribution through Kemado Records. The 11 songs represent a departure from the fictional narratives of her former recordings (Ballads of Living and Dying and The Saga of Mayflower May) and mark a foray into non-fiction. The tracks come across as dark tales filled with death and lost love of the Northeastern-stoic variety, which makes sense, as Nadler hails from that region.

Nadler wrote the new album’s songs during a cold winter in Providence, Rhode Island. “Some were written in hotel rooms on tour, but most were written in a very bleak time,” she says, alluding to her purge-approach to crafting a song, “I usually impulsively pick up the guitar — I hate to admit it, but I will go months without touching one except for live performances — then I go on a bender and write 20 songs in two weeks. I like to let all my emotions build up, then explode, and write a record.”

Recorded and produced by Espers’ Greg Weeks, the album is filled with more instrumentation this time around, with help from Weeks (synthesizer, acid leads), Helena Espvall (cello), Orion Rigel Dommisse (synthesizer), Jesse Sparhawk (mandolin, harp), and Otto Hauser (percussion). In “Bird on Your Grave,” Weeks’ contribution works to a particularly dramatic effect. “I told Greg I wanted metal guitars,” she says about the song. “That made him very happy, because he loved to play metal guitars over pretty music. I was so happy he just jumped right into it and didn’t hold back.”

Although Songs III had the help of many musicians, in tonight’s solo performance, Nadler definitely doesn’t need anyone's assistance. Her voice and acoustic guitar prove enough to entrance the crowd. She slows down the tempo, lingers longer on notes, and revels in dynamic changes. At times, she closes notes in a whisper or a coo. Only her lips and her strumming fingers move; the rest of her body is unwaveringly still.

Nadler’s voice is undeniably what draws listeners, but her skillful and delicate guitar playing is also a force to be reckoned with, especially in her rendition of a Towns Van Zandt cover. She plays in place of “The River” by Bruce Springsteen, a song not on the new record but that she had been hoping to perform and hadn’t learned it in time for the show.

Although she is shy, Nadler is not naïve to the way she is perceived on and offstage. She seeks to stay on top of her image to stave off, at the very least, seeming incompetent. “I always dreaded going into the guitar shops when I was younger,” she says. “Nobody would take me seriously, and I always had to earn the respect. I do feel that with male musicians the respect is there and you have to ‘un-earn’ it.”

Earned it she has. Each new album charts Nadler's ever-growing mastery of technique and command, as evidenced on Songs III and the opening of the club’s door as more fans enter to hear her perform the new album. Not bad for a shy girl.