There is something about death that fascinates the mind to no end. What Hamlet called “the undiscovered country” looms in the background of every living being, promising to strike but never announcing when it will. And while few want to be there when it finally happens, it has to be said that when it comes to remedies for fear, few are as potent as death. Were you to consider the fact that your days are numbered, and that your light will soon be spent, the fears you once had about money and status would quickly melt into air. Put it this way: if you knew you had only a day to live, you probably wouldn’t spend it at the bank.
Accuse me of being morbid, but there’s a time and place for thinking these thoughts. And while that time may not come very often, if you listen to Marissa Nadler’s Songs III: Bird on the Water, you’ll be in the right frame of mind to do so. Every song on the American folk musician’s excellent album is suffused with death, which alongside love is a recurring theme here. But like Sufjan Stevens’ Seven Swans, to which the album bears certain stylistic and thematic resemblances, it is never sad or depressing. If anything, Marissa manages somehow to make songs about death and love eerily uplifting.
The opening song Diamond Heart encapsulates the approach of the entire album, opening with gentle plucking and the soothing singing of an angel whose voice reaches the highest notes with graceful ease. Equally poised are her lyrics, which like those of Leonard Cohen, whose song Famous Blue Raincoat Marissa covers elsewhere on the album, can tell a story with an economy of words. The refrain: “Your father died / A month ago, / And he scattered his ashes / In the snow,” is revealing because it tells the listener that the lover, whom she is addressing, is as dead as his father. Otherwise were the lover still alive, she would have no need to tell him of his father’s passing, as he would have found it out for himself.
The following songs sound just as beautifully haunted, as if Marissa were communicating to friends beyond the grave. Mexican Summer is warm and inviting, but has an aura of nostalgic yearning about it that is reminiscent of Beach House’s Walk in the Park. Another song, Silvia, seems to reference a poem by Italian poet Giacomo Leopardi, but its words leave no doubt as to the character’s fate: “The water is your friend / And down and down and down you go.” In my view, the most exhilarating song is Bird On Your Grave, which begins slowly and wistfully, before rising to the surface with an electric guitar solo similar in tone and eccentricity to the one in Sufjan Stevens’ Sister. It’s a sad fact of life that Marissa Nadler will probably never be as well known as the acts on the Billboard Hot 100, but to anyone who cares deeply about art and beauty, her music will be infinitely more gratifying, and longer-lasting too.
Samedi Quelquechose 