1. preview demo version
Marissa Nadler : The Ivy and the clover (US,2006)****°
Each album of Marissa has some relationship with certain herbs/plants, amongst other things (like Book of Am had). Many flowers are also girl’s names, all aspects of womanhood. “Daisy and violet” in that way are gathered together like flowers of harmony. Nice to hear her sing a “farewell heartbreak”, which is also a lovely and sweet goodbye to goodbyes. There’s something light in the style here, in balance with the dark moments. And I think that is more or less a transformed theme and new direction in this album. While the previous albums dealt with the suffering not of continuing a deeply loved relationship, Marissa realises she has to open up the gates to a different and promising energy. Literature, poetry, and expressing feelings, and then bringing it into the world had saved her. The world itself was going to develop something for her in return, and it is she who can notice the fruits she has sawn and unfold to what still makes her different. Very romantic is “air inside my lungs”, with delicate acoustic guitar and backing vocals. “Salutations in the dark” is played on acoustic guitar in a semi-eastern way, a newly tried style which is very successful. “Space out my holy ghosts” is a small intermezzo with ghostly voices. “Summer of Love” continues the farewell to farewell statement, realizing in some way that she was making an eternity in songs as a replacement in energy for the love she had expected to flourish that way. “Cortez the killer” sounds like a song I recognize from somewhere..(Neil Young). Again this is with very different guitar tuning from the other tracks. Last track, “Conjuring Spirit Worlds” is an outtake from the session from her previous album (with Greg Weeks,..), with Helena Espvall on cello. It is a very beautiful last track with a great haunting and bewitching-fire improvisation on cello. Highly recommended.
2.->published by Eclipse Rec. Marissa Nadler : The Ivy and the clover (US,2006)****°
Somehow, the announced “Ivy and the clovers” went unnoticed. I’m not sure what happened or how. At the time of listening to both demo versions of the to be released album, this one sounded more promising to me than the ‘Bird on the Water’. I don’t see why one track of these sessions finally landed up here. “Conjuring Spirit worlds” is a brilliantly arranged track with cello, with also more bass sounds, and congas. On the album it is also a breaking point in style, leaving behind the earlier sessions, and with a differently picked last track, “Silver Summers”. The first 6 songs hang somewhat together. They are all played with sad fingerpickings by a soft heartbreaking voice suffering from a mixture of a demystified protected world influenced by noble literature, and the realty of a too short relationship, which could not precede the mysteries of each moment. It buries the story under a bed of clover. There’s a saying telling someone’s under the clovers, making clear that someone’s dead. The first story, of “Daisy and Violet” is one of these so many stories of women with names of flowers. It’s a story told like a traditional folk song, with the drama of one or both figures dying by some event (I couldn’t make up the whole image yet). With that literature background for a youngster, women are like flowers, sometimes picked too soon, for their beauty. All other tracks clearly are related with that love affair. It’s from a youngster’s vision, but while having faced something of eternity, even in a lost case disappointment, leaving the theme of death lingering on for her a bit too long, even when only much time can heal, the true values underneath should not only prevail, discovered but also further developed, this could have been the closing chapter, and to some degree also, let’s hope so before it 'are but ghosts' that hunt, like a gothic nature with a lost connection. One very early track, “Space Out Holy Ghosts” might show that danger, just slightly, a lo-fi homerecording vocal improvisation with more reverb and bit of guitar. With both last tracks bringing the world again closer. With all real-life connections made during the excessive touring the last few years, we can only know this must bring us to a next step somewhere and somehow. A nice document.
