Completely unexpected, as a ray of sun after a week in which rain has been falling down without stop, here it comes this new album containing previously unreleased songs by Marissa Nadler.
‘Bury Your Name’, out via Sacred Bones/Bella Union, follows the previous LP ‘Strangers’ of only four months, but in practice we could also consider (even if this defition it’s not rightly 100% correct) it as an attachment, because of the songs of the two albums were recorded in the same period.
Of course the process used for the recording of ‘Bury Your Name’ are completely different from the one used in ‘Strangers’, that was a much more complex work, because the work of production by the audio engineer Randall Dunn (working with Marissa Nadler from the release of ‘July’ in 2014) and because it was much attended by her fans and from the critics. It wasn’t the same for this new one.
Recorded completely at her home in Boston, ‘Bury Your Name’ it’s a collection of exclusive songs written and recorded in the most easy and comfortable condition and in the solitude of her appartment. Originally released only in a stricly limited cassette with a deluxe of ‘Strangers’, later it was decided to make of it a true album, also because it was faulty to consider it just an EP. ‘Bury Your Name’ contained in fact eight songs, but much more than this, it has got an its own identity and dignity, characteristics that give it the right to be considered as an LP and not just a sort of parenthesis into the carreer of this chanteuse and songwriter.
Wrote about ‘Strangers’ that it was been an occasion for Marissa to reinvent herself adopering the use of a sort of kaleidoscopic effect, a sofferent process in which she tried to define herself beyond the others and that the album was possibly an occasion for all of her listeners to do the same. So appearently the album was a very difficult one to write in a conceptual way and also something that necessearly has got not a definite end, because there’s not end in what are games of mirrors. That on the other hand also means that you have always to work on yourself and so to continue to consider also the context in which you live and the people that are actually around you.
Coming to ‘Bury Your Name’, it’s easy to consider that despite it also has got the typical dark and soft, quiet atmospheres of the other album (something recurrent in all of her works, on the other hand), the contents of the songs are appearently very different and this it’s at the same time interesting and probably also inevitable considering the different situations in which they were recorded and the artist’s objectives.
We’re not talking of a process of separation. To write and sing in both the albums she is always the same person, but Marissa is able to make a distinction between what are actually not two parts of her personality, but two different necessities.
‘Bury Your Name’ contains eight folk acoustic songs in which Marissa Nadler assumes the role of a true narrator. Like she is confessing herself and later to her listeners some parts of his personal life and emotions, she is inevitably same times desperate and sufferent, ‘Give Me Your Gun’, some way pessimist, ‘Pick Me Up Before I Die’, or nostalgic, ‘I Remember The Touch Of Your Hands’, ‘The Best You Ever Had’ or even visionary, ‘Horsefly’, ‘Sleeping In The Afternoon’.
Despite this the result in listening to the album it is not a sensation of loss and confusion. Like she was reading a diary, she accompains the listeners to explore her and their emotions with the elegance and the incredible fascination of her voice. No regrets. Just the willing to be cradled in sea made of memories and deep emotions. It was just a while, before opening your eyes and starting living again in the only time that really exist, the present.
Vote: 7/10
You can also read this review at machchapuchchare
