Rising: Marissa Nadler: "Dying Breed" / "Cortez the Killer" (Neil Young Cover)
Armed with little more than a 12-string guitar and her dusky mezzo-soprano, Marissa Nadler has cast quite a siren presence across her first two albums for the Eclipse label. Her exquisite ballads are steeped in Victorian Age melancholy and painterly lyricism, and her forthcoming third album, Songs III: Bird on the Water, is easily her most varied and polished to date. Produced by Espers' Greg Weeks, the record features the now virtually obligatory appearances of fellow Espers musicians Jesse Sparhawk and Otto Hauser, and finds Nadler dipping again into her seemingly bottomless fount of plaintive, gothic devotionals.
On "Dying Breed", from Songs III, Nadler showcases her natural affinity for songs of loss and nostalgic longing, as well as her talent for crafting evocative, enduring melodies. "Your earthly days have passed you by/ Where did you go when they took your bones?" Nadler wonders, as distant bells and chimes toll like an Atlantic steamer lost in the fog. As with many of her best tracks, "Dying Breed" sounds as though it might be a traditional, centuries-old ballad, but is summoned with a singular grace and Nadler's own unique, supernatural gravity.
MP3: > Marissa Nadler: "Dying Breed"
[from Songs III: Bird on the Water; due 03/12/07 on Peacefrog Records]
Despite her sepia-toned cover art and Old World imagery, however, Nadler herself has always acknowledged the influence of Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, and Neil Young. As evidence, she offers an expertly rendered version of Cohen's "Famous Blue Raincoat" on Songs III, and has now also recorded a version of Neil Young's oft-covered "Cortez the Killer". Young and other cover artists such as Built to Spill, Slint, or the Drones have primarily viewed "Cortez" as a vehicle for extended guitar jams, but Nadler unsurprisingly concentrates instead on the central imperialist drama of the song's lyric. She performs her delicate version as a quiet song of witness, reciting its narrative almost in the manner of an ancient oracle, stoic and powerless to alter the tides of human history.
MP3: > Marissa Nadler: "Cortez The Killer" [Neil Young Cover]