na: nina nastasia & jim white

A great one from Nina Nastasia, and some other recommended titles to check out.

Nina Nastasia & Jim White, You Follow Me: This is a lovely record, as all of Nastasia’s albums have been to date, and it might possibly be my favorite of hers. Loving Nastasia might seem to make me a bit hypocritical, given my oft-spouted distrust of singer-songwriters and all that they warble, but there are fundamentally different qualities in Nastasia’s music — and especially in her collaborations with Jim White — that push it far away from Girl With a Guitar and much more into a funereal territory, something harrowing, sad and poignant.

Mainly, Nastasia’s songs, even when slow, seem to tumble all over themselves, the rhythm, guitar strumming, her voice, the accompaniment hurried, with lots of little halting steps, as if they are stopping to catch their breath. A song like “Brad Haunts a Party” from her last record, On Leaving, is a great example (and my favorite song she has ever done). There’s this great big deep breath before the chorus (which rarely arrives) and then it launches into this lumbering thing, the pieces chunkily bumping into each other, not quite meshing but absolutely expressing something (in this case kind of a post-youth ennui, like The Big Chill as a Lucinda Williams song that makes you want to cry more than smile). (“You got high/ Because you had to,” is a line I really like.)

You Follow Me has that same feel/sound/whatever all over it. Best is “The Day I Would Bury You” (great title!), which starts stark and defiant, her voice naked as it always is but with a hint of a curled lip (“I’m wise to you”), but then the drums come in and starts loosening up a little bit (she’s gaining confidence) and finally, with the pitter-patter of drumsticks on a snare rim it starts falling and cascading, picking up steam and accompaniment as it goes, gaining in beauty with each measure, approximating jazz in a very polite and pedestrian way, but jazz all the same. And then she loses it a bit (“I swore I’d stay afraid of you”) and it falls apart bit by bit, and it’s hard to tell where she or the song is going to go.

It’s just so believable to me. Her stories make sense because they sound experienced, and not just in the past, but in the present. I’m not sure how else to really say it, but this is a fantastic record and she is a miraculous performer. Be her fan.

Eric Copeland, Hermaphrodite: I’ve got a geek-crush on Carpark and the vast majority of what they put out thanks to Beach House, first and foremost, but also Panda Bear, Dan Deacon and Takagi Masakatsu, and so I am very much predisposed to like what they’re selling. This Eric Copeland record I’ve enjoyed quite a bit today. It’s an abstract found-sound/electronic instrumental record, very much in the sound collage category (think Colleen) with some songs (the first two especially) flirting with a pop structure and all of that, while others are purely atmospheric. Can’t give it a full-shake recommendation, but if you are into that sort of stuff, this is not bad a’tall.

Willie Colon, A Man and His Music: From the five-star AMG review of this new, best-of collection of the Fania master:

For those with any interest in Willie Colón’s career, The Player is intelligently selected and packed with great material… Beginning with a rare single from 1966-1967 originally on the Futura label, the first disc traces Colón’s career during the ’70s, including a wealth of salsa landmarks: “The Hustler,” “Che Che Colé,” “Junio ’73,” “MC2,” and more.

Luke Vibert, Chicago, Detroit, Redruth: New album from Vibert (Plug/Wagon Christ, etc).

Soft Hearted Scientists, Take Time to Wonder in a Whirling World: Sweeny mentioned this one in yesterday’s comments, and he’s right on-point. He called it “soft, spacey and quirky.”