SHELTERING SKY: Nina Nastasia’s sweepingly orchestral release “Outlaster” suggests within its title an element of time, and how to move past life’s bruises, love’s slings and arrows and how to wait out thunderstorms for the emerging clarity of clearer skies. Take the first track, “Cry Cry Baby”, with verses about sadness and old-fashioned love, told through melting violin work and countrified acoustic guitar moving the song along prettily at the pace of driftwood: “This work it won’t kill me / But I’m not stronger for it / I’ve just learned to wait it out / You’re my own true love.”
This album is classically orchestrated with crestfallen and timeless instrumentation — drum brushes, muted brass, winding violins, light guitar, and jazz subtleties. The single, “You’re a Holy Man”, is a harem of strings, with clarinet fanfare, and deep-thunder drums like the Eastern-tinged work of Dead Can Dance. It’s a snake-charmer of a song, taking listeners on a journey through maracas and run-on verses about golden suns, green valleys, kings, and vast lands. There’s a cliché verse or so, like “… all your geese are in a row” — but it works anyway and rights itself with poetically elegant lines like, “You’re a holy man / At the ears of kings / Who gives audience / To the droll and common things.”
The empathetic, “You Can Take Your Time”, begins with Nastasia’s intimate voice, tender in its understatement, trying to sooth a person who wants to give up: “I wish I could remember / The refrain that I had written / Surely they were sage words / To assure you you’re forgiven / I know where you’re going / Maybe you should reconsider / You just take your time / To work things out.” It’s perhaps the best track on the album — as emotive and moving as Aimee Mann’s “Wise Up” from the Magnolia Soundtrack. “This Familiar” is a sad ballad that feels like part noir, part Argentinian tango, part Edith Piaf. It’s splendid.
The delightfully strange “What’s Out There” finds Nastasia singing at her loudest, until a mid-song instrumental blow-up: Strings and crashing drums fall away to speedy violin pizzicato, sounding as random and wild as the movement of a colony of ants or a hive of bees. Then enters the smack of a typewriter’s hammer hitting metal, dissonant and choppy piano, and looped noise. It is one of the best musical moments on the record. The album ends, ironically, with the song “Outlaster” — as if the title track were a reward for those patient enough to make the full journey to it. It’s an elegant touch. — Words by David D. Robbins Jr.
Nina Nastasia “You’re a Holy Man”
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