Marissa Nadler
Bury Your Name

Completely unexpected, like a ray of sunshine after a week of incessant rain, here comes a new album by Marissa Nadler, featuring previously unreleased, new songs.

'Bury Your Name' (Sacred Bones/Bella Union) follows the previous album, 'Strangers', practically by four/five months, even though we can also consider this last one (even though, as we'll see, this definition is not entirely accurate) a kind of appendix, because the songs of the two albums were recorded in the same period.

Even if recorded in the same period, it must be said that the work in the two cases was radically different. 'Strangers' was certainly a very sophisticated and complex work, with an important production process behind it, guided by the usual Randall Dunn (who has been a regular collaborator of Marissa Nadler since the release of 'July' in 2014). Besides, it was an album much awaited by the public and critics.

None of this, however, is valid for 'Bury Your Name'. Recorded in her Boston home, the album is a collection of eight original songs, written and recorded in what is perhaps the most comfortable and least demanding situation possible and in the solitude of her apartment. Originally released in a limited cassette edition with the deluxe edition of 'Strangers', it was later decided to turn it into a real album. After all, it would be wrong to consider it an EP: the album contains eight songs, which are not few, but even more than this, it has its own identity and dignity, characteristics that grant this work to be considered an independent LP and not a kind of small parenthesis in this singer-songwriter's discography.

I wrote, regarding 'Strangers', that this album had been an opportunity for Marissa to reinvent herself and her way of writing songs, employing a painful process of defining herself through others and that this particular way of writing was at the same time an invitation to the listeners to do the same through the listening of her songs. It was an album as beautiful as it was complicated, written in a conceptual way, and which did not foresee a purpose we can define as 'final', but which left an open door to future developments, because after all, there is never an end in what can be defined as a game of mirrors. This means that this process does not have and must never have an end, just as it's always possible to grow oneself, improve, and even in the consideration of the context we are in and the people around us.

Even considering that there are the typical dark and soft, quiet atmospheres common also in 'Strangers' (as indeed in all her other productions), this new album has different contents. The songs are different, very different from those of 'Strangers', and this is in some way both interesting and inevitable, considering the two different modes of recording and the final goals the artist had.

We are not exactly talking about a process of separation. The person writing and singing the songs is still the same, but Marissa Nadler shows she has a level of awareness capable of separating what she wants to express from time to time, and the two albums do not show two different parts of her personality, but two different needs.

'Bury Your Name' contains eight acoustic folk songs in which Marissa Nadler takes on the role of the narrator. As if confessing herself and then sharing with her listeners, she narrates pieces of her existence and her emotions. Sometimes in a desperate and suffering way, 'Give Me Your Gun', other times even pessimistically, 'Pick Me Up Before I Die', nostalgically, 'I Remember The Touch Of Your Hands', 'The Best You Ever Had', and finally also visionary and dreamy, 'Horsefly', 'Sleeping In The Afternoon'.

Nonetheless, the result that arises from listening is absolutely not a sensation of loss or confusion. It's as if she is reading a diary and then accompanies the listeners with her voice and her music through her emotions with her ever elegant and charming style. There are ultimately no regrets in this album. Only that tender will to cradle oneself in a soft sea made of memories and emotions. Just a moment, before waking up, opening the eyes, and diving into the only time that really matters, the present.