Marissa Nadler
New Radiations
SACRED BONES
Marissa Nadler mentioned to me in an interview earlier this summer that New Radiations is probably her slowest and saddest record so far—and that’s a big statement after early contenders such as 2004’s Ballads of Living and Dying and 2005’s The Saga of Mayflower May set a high bar. Over the past two decades, the Nashville-via-Boston musician has taken her songs from the pastoral to the netherworld and back again. Whereas 2021’s symphonic, self-produced The Path of the Clouds was inspired by true crime, the gothic songwriter’s latest collection of bad-dream ballads feels like a return to the mold she was cast in, as first heard on the short story vignettes that populated Strangers and July over a decade ago.
Much of the album finds Nadler inhabiting distressing character studies as she plucks at her guitar and wrestles with the current state of America through obscured lyrics—a standby scenario for her in the past as both a painter and songwriter. The new record is self-produced again, but Nadler chose to cut things back to what she does best in place of collaborating with gothically leaning guests like she did for The Path of the Clouds. Yet New Radiations was recorded in both Nadler’s home studio and at Nashville’s Haptown Studios with the support of friend Roger Moutenot. Additionally, it’s mixed with a dark and swirling ambience by Randall Dunn (Earth, Sunn O))), and features a variety of arrangements from longtime collaborator Milky Burgess, whose dreamy slide guitar, growling electric guitars, and angelic synthesizers give a gravitational force that acts upon Nadler’s beautiful mezzo-soprano singing.
The album interfaces with several protagonists who are in transit. Opener “It Hits Harder” follows an aviator in a Cessna trying to leave the past behind: “I will fly around the world just to forget you / Try not to hit the mountains as I pass through.” The title track and “If It’s an Illusion” sound like forgotten Spaghetti Western soundtrack pieces with a great production atmosphere swirling around each one like a deep fog. Nadler mentioned that the title track is directly inspired by what’s currently happening in the US, and she’s hoping for a more radiant tomorrow. She sings over the lashing storm: “Psychic vibrations and new radiations have taken their toll on me.”
On the cosmic murder ballad “Hatchet Man,” an unsettling scene in a hotel chills the bones: “The angel made him do it and he made me watch / He thought no one would notice her gone.” The final tracks on the record keep the vibes high: “To Be the Moon King” in particular was inspired by the father of modern rocketry and depicts a man writing codes backward in mirrors and tinkering with backyard rockets to reach “Saturn’s rings, burning.” Nadler acts as a musical ferrywoman for tortured lives through it all, journeying from this life to another just out of reach. During the day, she teaches people how to paint, but in her music, she teaches them how to fly.
