NINA NASTASIA – On Leaving

(CD, Fat Cat)

I think Nina Nastasia has fallen in love shortly before recording this record because I remember her as the most sinister and dark of all modern female singer/songwriters, the most subdued and subtle as well. Now she has coloured her songs and arrangements with light sparks and bright melodies, which suits her voice just fine. I can’t remember her singing about perfect afternoons or taking skinny dips (on “Our Day Trip”) nor do I remember her using ¾ - rhythms and marching drums on her prior records (especially recommended “Run to Ruin” on Touch & Go). But it suits her fine. If “On leaving” really is a study on taking goodbyes Nastasia has to be really good about going away and leaving loved ones behind. So I’ll stick to my first guess, let’s just see how this works out.

Years after “The Good Son” was released, Nick Cave admitted to have been in love with a girl when he wrote and recorded that album and listening back that makes a lot of sense. Of course, in comparison to Nastasia the arrangements and songs are richer, dripping with ideas and more straightforward but then they have always been. The analogy really isn’t at all about music but how the emotional situation of the singer had an effect on the overall atmosphere of the record. Both artists chiselled off some of the edges of their music, brightened up the arrangements and dusted out some old corners. And just like “The Weeping Song” or “The Hammer Song” aren’t really light songs in any kind of meaning, there are still some dark spots around “On Leaving”, like “Why don’t you stay home” musically or other songs lyrically. Nina Nastasia hasn’t left anything behind or betrayed her craft and art from her earlier albums. But the difference is too striking to overgo it.

The most striking feature are those songs whose melodies tend into a Vaudeville almost Weil/Brecht direction, for instance the main parts of “Treehouse”, but never reach the ostentative off-showing of the Dresden Dolls (though I have openely admitted that I like the Dresden Dolls, their in your face provocations are just as amusing as those of Marilyn Manson, which means for about five minutes. But I have also openly admitted to like the visual parts and some songs of Manson as well, so there you go.) Don’t worry, all you fans of Nina Nastasia, the gentleness, the dark subtleness and the emotionality is still here, just some of the sounds that go around them have changed. And in the universe of Nina Nastasia that might mean a lot. As her move from Touch & Go to Fat Cat shows that at times things change and sometimes you just realize changes better and at other times not, but that doesn’t mean that things have stayed the same, doesn’t it?

It is still love and death, ballads and bawlers, disruptions clothed in gentleness, minimalism growing into monsters of song and all the things Leonard Cohen mentioned in “Tower of Song”. Actually, Nastasia defies all genres and categorizations. Her songs are a droney fuck you to country music, even the version that likes to adorn the alt in front. It laughs at the notion of being gothic music, for whatever that means between The Cure and Nine Inch Nails. And it definitely wants no beef with the semi-emotional hypersensibility of other female singers be they Julie Doiron or Fiona Apple. It seems to work in a time and place of its own (it has been spread that Nastasia writes most of her tunes on the toilet for privacy and not being disturbed, but I am not sure as to how this would leave any impression on the songs…) and it remains a wonder how something so silent and introspective can be so expressive and powerful at the same time.