Nina Nastasia
(FatCat)
Starting in folk and slipping the leash, late in the album, towards wilder, more dissonant post-classical forms, Nina Nastasia's Outlaster sheathes powerful emotions in stoic restraint. Endurance, self-control, muted strength are much on display here in Nastasia's voice which can rise in an instant from murmur to wail, or finish an operatic climax with whispered, octave-leaping subtlety. And, yes, there is plenty to endure, too, in ten meditations on romantic situations too tangled to exit, too intertwined to repair.
Outlaster's songs are more densely plotted than those on previous Nastasia albums (especially On Leaving), but still too astringent to be called lush. "Cry, Cry Baby," the album's opener, employs rough, frictive cellos and martial drum beats as its rhythmic underpinning. "Outlaster," at the end, builds prickly unease with pizzicato string parts. "This Familiar Way" has the chilled, ritual sensuality of tango, its long violin solo beginning in understatement and flaring, near the end, into feverish abandon. Nastasia, who to realize these songs worked with long-time collaborator Kennan Gudjonsson, the arranger Paul Bryan and a full complement of string and woodwind quartets, has stripped all possible latent sentimentality out of the instrumental backings, leaving, as in her singing, only the truest, rawest sorts of feeling.
The album starts a bit slow, with its most conventionally folky songs near the front ("Cry Cry Baby," "You Can Take Your Time"), but breaks out for the territories in its second half. "What's Out There" and "Outlaster" are, perhaps, its best and bravest songs, both framed in the tense, rhythmically compelling language of late 20th century classical music. You might think, for comparison, of the way Sam Amidon refracts early American folk songs through the modern dissonances and discontinuities. But amid his arrangements, Amidon keeps his voice plain spoken and unadorned.
Nastasia, by contrast, incorporates extraordinary variety and drama into her delivery. Now trilling, now whispering, now belting, she has a strong sense for when to use excess and when to cut back to nothing. As "What's Out There" builds towards a dramatic climax, Nastasia's voice rises into the phrase, "Now everything I knew is..." and then, when you expect her to let loose with the conclusion, she shifts up an octave and very nearly whispers the word "strange." It's a chilling moment, one that stops time and raises the hair on your arm for a second, and just as unexpected the fifth time you listen as the first.
Standout Tracks: "What's Out There" "Outlaster" JENNIFER KELLY
