Okay, so right off the bat I should warn that this isn’t actually a video clip (as advertised above). Today I’m going to highlight a couple audio clips from Marissa Nadler’s SoundCloud page, and I didn’t know what category to put this under. I could have created a new category called “Audio Clip of the Week” but that has the potential of never being used again.
The other day while I was perusing Twitter (you can follow us: @BDWPS), when I stumbled upon a post by Anthony Fantano of The Needle Drops fame. I follow Fantano because he has his finger on the pulse of new music, sometimes alerting me to artists I may not have heard of. Personally, I find his YouTube video album reviews to be a little too much about promoting himself and not enough about promoting great music, but I digress.
His ear for music can not be discredited, as seen in a short post he put up this week with a link to Marissa Nadler’s Soundcloud page, saying that she’d covered Black Sabbath’s “Solitude.” As a longtime supporter of Nadler and her unique brand of doom folk, I had to give it a listen. I’m not always a fan of covers because in most cases, artists just do their best impression of the original. This is what makes Nadler’s clip so amazing. Instead of trying to do some acoustic take on Sabbath, Nadler makes it completely her own and the result sounds almost nothing like the original. While the original version is calm and regal, Nadler’s version is a haunting dirge.
As I perused her Soundcloud page, I discovered that she’s been posting gems for the past year, including a fantastic cover of Elliot Smith’s “Pitseleh,” an ironic take on Father John Misty’s “Hollywood Forever Cemetary Sings,” and an epic vocal arrangement of the Game of Thrones theme song. There’s also tons more goodness to be had, including covers of Radiohead, Daniel Johnston, and Townes Van Zandt. Check it all out here: https://soundcloud.com/marissanadler
On his first two efforts, I didn’t see Miguel as much more than a cheap Prince imitation. He had the pompadour hair, the gentle falsetto, and the guitar theatrics of The Artist Formerly Known As, but in my opinion, he lacked the songwriting chops. I probably wouldn’t have even checked out his new album based solely off my unsatisfactory experience with his past efforts, but then, he said the following in response to a question about neo-soul luminary Frank Ocean: “I genuinely believe that I make better music, all the way around.”
Bob Dylan Wrote Propaganda Songs 