New Radiations
Over the course of two decades, Marissa Nadler has absorbed myriad aesthetics—folk, goth, dream pop, doom metal—into her singular brand of occult Americana. And on 2021’s *The Path of the Clouds*, she executed her most lavish, cinematic, and powerful rendering yet, with the help of special guests like ex-Cocteau Twin Simon Raymonde and harpist Mary Lattimore. However, *New Radiations* sees Nadler going back to old ways, putting the focus squarely on her acoustic guitar-playing and singing. None of these 11 tracks even feature percussion, allowing her double-tracked, self-harmonizing voice to fill the entire canvas of hymns like “It Hits Harder.” No song better encapsulates the album’s uncanny balance of haunted and heavenly than the aptly titled “Bad Dreams Summertime.” And while *New Radiations* features no lack of painterly embellishments from collaborator Milky Burgess—be it the ominous string textures and distorted drones on “Smoke Screen Selene” or the Floydian synth swells on “Weightless Above the Water”—they’re largely used to impressionistic, subliminal effect, representing the turbulent undercurrent of emotions bubbling beneath Nadler’s deceptively serene storytelling.
Marissa Nadler's tenth studio album, New Radiations, is her most raw, stripped-down, and intimate to date. It's also one of her best.
New Radiations by Marissa Nadler album review by Emre Gurdal for Northern Transmissions, The artist's LP drops on August 15 via Sacred Bones