Nadeah
Venus Gets Even

When a man makes musical discoveries by watching RAI fiction, instead of using tried-and-true channels from his youth or snooping around on very cool alternative music sites or the super cool de baser, he probably should start asking himself some questions and maybe even give himself some answers. But I shamelessly postpone the existential reflections that would affect me to the future; during this period, I am too lazy, for now, I take what comes without asking too many questions.

This autumn, while watching one of these fictions, I happened to find the piece used as a theme song particularly beautiful. “One Way Lie”, an easy piece that, for some reason, gave me a bit of that emptiness in the stomach that every music lover knows well and is perpetually searching for.

While investigating, I came across an Australian musician, stage name Nadeah, with a nice warm voice, artistically active in England and France, with quite a lengthy artistic journey under her belt: involvement in the bands “LoveGods” and “Nouvelle Vaguee” and then a solo adventure.

“One Way Lie” seems to be unreleased for now; in my brief investigation on this musician, however, I found this LP in her name and inside I discovered music quite different from the idea I had by listening to the mentioned track, but which turned out to be a nice surprise nonetheless. If I had to mention a genre to provide a general indication, I would probably say pop, and I would say it based mainly on the accessibility and immediacy of the tracks and their “radio-friendly” duration. Supporting my claim is also the importance of melody in the musical proposal's economy, fortunately characterized by a certain originality. The music, instead, is the result of a mix of ingredients quite far from chart pop: folk, honky-tonk, and jazz, especially. Often these ingredients are mixed to create a particularly pleasant retro atmosphere (e.g., 'At the Moment', 'Odile').

Sometimes a bit of the musician's rock attitude comes out, especially in the approach with which some pieces are performed and in the essentiality of their arrangement (e.g., 'Scary Carol'). Other times, you find yourself in front of pieces performed in the manner of confessional singer-songwriters with a voice accompanied almost exclusively by a single instrument (piano, guitar). The sources of inspiration that Nadeah cites on her Facebook page are many and varied; perhaps the most evident one on this album, for as little as I've listened to, is Rickie Lee Jones. For now, it seems to be a nice discovery, a vugruma.