In a recording career now spanning nearly 20 years, the indie singer-songwriter Marissa Nadler has specialized in moody, haunting soundscapes and lyrics that have drawn from folk, ambient and dream pop influences. Especially during the current times with the pandemic and the isolation of lockdown, Nadler's hypnotic music has taken on a greater emotional significance, as reflected on her recent full-length album The Path of the Clouds, which came out in October.
“I spent on the entirety of lockdown working on that record,” she says of The Path of the Clouds, which showcased her unique storytelling and delicate vocals. “I barely left the house and I barely saw a single person. So maybe my fascination with these other people's stories [in the songs] has a lot to do with me not really experiencing any of my own during that time, which I think a lot of people could relate to losing themselves and whether they're binge-watching something or looking through books. It's just a way to keep company through the loneliness in this very dark time in our history.”
She hasn't stopped there with The Path of the Clouds—just earlier this month, Nadler released a new EP titled The Wrath of the Clouds (Sacred Bones/Bella Union). In the same sonic and thematic vein of the preceding record, the new mini-album features three original tracks and two cover songs. According to the singer, the three songs she wrote were recorded at the same time as the material for The Path of the Clouds, while the covers were done after. “It's definitely a companion piece,” she explains of the EP release. “I consider it one unit a little bit.”
The Wrath of the Clouds opens with the seven-minute-long folkish “Guns on the Sundeck,” which references the Queen Mary, a now-retired early 20th-century British ocean liner moored in Long Beach, California. Today it's a hotel-tourist attraction and the subject of haunting legends. “A few of the songs on both the EP and the LP were inspired by watching various crime TV and mystery shows like Unsolved Mysteries—and even the ones that definitely had many parallels to my own life,” Nadler explains. “That was one of the songs that I wrote. I didn't really know much about the ship either—it's not like I've had a long-standing obsession with ships. It just was a really fascinating story, especially because it's rumored to be haunted and I'm kind of drawn to stuff like that, even if I'm only half a believer in apparitions.”
Another track from The Wrath of the Clouds, “All of the Eclipses,” features vocals by Amber Webber from the Canadian group Black Mountain. It was a song that almost made it on The Path of the Clouds but eventually left off. “I don't even really know led me to pick certain ones and not others,” says Nadler. “But it was one of those ones that I wanted people to hear. I love the vocal interplay [with Amber] as well. I think her voice has really different textures and they sound great together. It's really a rumination on standing still in nature and this oneness with the universe for a split second.”
And similar to some of the songs from the preceding album, the Gothic/psychedelic sounding track “Some Secret Existence” on The Wrath of the Clouds EP focuses its storyline on a character who disappears and meets an unknown fate. According to Nadler, it’s a “story of a random person, an agoraphobic [named Dottie] who just disappeared. It really interests me to sometimes give voice to people that are overlooked in history. So her story reminded me a little bit of Connie Converse, the singer who disappeared [in 1974]. I was re-listening to all the stuff that I did not fully develop, and then I went back into “Some Secret Existence” and added some of the extra harmonies and those psychedelic elements.”
The last two songs on the EP consist of covers of somewhat obscure songs. The first is the chilly “Saunders Ferry Lane,” previously recorded by the late country singer Sammi Smith. “Sammi Smith is an unsung hero of mine. Not a lot of people know she is. I didn't know who she was until a music writer friend of mine, who grew up more into country music, turned me on to her. She just has an incredible voice, and that song is pretty much awesome. That was on my bucket list–I had tried covered years before. So I wanted to give it another try, now that I had great musicians available to me.”
And perhaps somewhat surprisingly to people familiar with Nadler's body of work, the singer's soulful cover of the Alessi Brothers’ “Seabird” sounds rather poppy and upbeat. She came across the track while watching the 2016 movie Hunt for the Wilderpeople in which the song appeared at the end credits. “It was an instant love,” she recalls of her initial encounter of the Alessi Brothers track. “I actually Shazam-ed it. And I was like, ‘What is the song? This is so catchy.’ And it's completely unlike anything I've ever sung. It's very upbeat and fast. And that was part of the reason I did it. I think it's important to keep people guessing.”
The Wrath of the Clouds wraps up a particularly productive creative period for Nadler that began with last year’s The Path of the Clouds. That full-length record generated positive reviews upon its release with songs referencing a number of different subjects–including stories of characters in mysterious circumstances, such as the female protagonist the revisionist murder ballad “Bessie, Did You Make It”; the infamous airplane hijacker D.B. Cooper via the album’s title song; and the 1962 Alcatraz prison escapees in “Well Sometimes You Can’t Just Stay.” Among the singles released from the record was the dreamy and lovely “If I Could Breathe Underwater,” which features harpist Mary Lattimore.
“Mary and I go way back, way back to our early days when she was living in Philadelphia,” says Nadler.” I asked her to play on the record because I don't know too my people that can do what she does. I said, ‘Do whatever you want,’ because she's so intuitive or intrinsically gifted. So it just kind of happened. It was very exciting. I do love that song because it's very different for me, like how it changed from the demo. I have a demo where it's just very acoustic, to adding the drum and harp, and it really became something entirely different.”
The Path of the Clouds is the first Marissa Nadler album that the artist produced herself. “That's something I'm really proud of,” she says. “I learned a lot of new things. I did a lot of the recording on Pro Tools. A lot of the instrumentation came about remotely because it was done during quarantine, so a lot of the people that played on it just emailed me their stuff. And I popped it into the session, and most of the time it worked really well.”
And recording the full-length album was an opportunity for Nadler, who primarily performs on guitar, to learn how to play on piano. She acknowledges that brought something more to her songwriting. “I do you think it added an extra something new to the way that I compose melodies. I have been playing guitar since I was 12 or so. I always wanted to be a piano player. Jesse Chandler [of the band Mercury Rev], who also plays on the record, was my piano teacher and taught me how to read music the right way. I think it just opened up some things in my head that I hadn't been using.”
Of the nine studio albums she has made—not counting the numerous credits she’s racked up from appearing on other people's records as well as compilations—Nadler says The Path of the Clouds is her best record to date. “In terms of songwriting, I think July and The Path of the Clouds are the most cohesive from start to finish, but that's just where I'm at right now. I think a lot of it had to do with self-producing it and calling all the shots.”
Now into her third decade of recording, Nadler has balanced between releasing music that has generated critical acclaim and a loyal cult following. “For artists across the board, there's always going to be somebody that's doing better than you,” she says in reference to being an outsider of the mainstream, “and has more exposure whether you're a writer or a musician or painter. Some painters and musicians and artists are really good and never get any recognition. You really have to do it for the right reasons. If I were driven by fame and money, I would have given up a long time ago. I do it because I enjoy it. I may be kind of a cult musician, but that cult I do get a lot of great support from. It keeps me going.”
