We had waited two years for NINA NASTASIA’s latest album of songs and following her recently announced ill health the UK and Ireland will have to wait a little longer to see her perform them. There's a symmetry and appropriateness there. Waiting, accepting the vicissitudes of uncommon existence, and feeling strength in the passage of time are strongly present in Outlaster's exquisite collection.
Steve Albini recorded them at Electrical Audio in Chicago. Paul Bryan created arrangements (with Dylan Willemsa contributing on "What’s Out There") using two small ensembles gathered together by Kennan Gudjonsson. Jay Bellerose contributed his masterly drumming and ace Chicago guitarist Jeff Parker joined in, with Bryan on bass, to provide an immaculate post rock trio. The results of using these three elements in the rich accompaniments are triumphantly good.
For those like me who had been wondering where Nina could go next – with five untouchable albums already to her credit "Outlaster" provides a refined and complex response. After a dozen listens I am still working my way through the delights. There is no grasping for novelty or attention here - no superficial change of direction. The album keeps all that we already value in her music and then adds deep layers of subtlety and complexity that push into conscious awareness only gradually. The last moments of the eponymous final track are overwhelmingly beautiful. Close listening attention is necessary, expected, and readily given.
Perhaps Albini is crucial to the ease with which the listener's attention can be focused. Every touch and every consonant is audible, both in its own right and in its contribution to the surprising density of harmony and texture. Fingers moving on strings, a drumstick touching a rim, and sighs of breath are knowingly left in the mix. A sense of immediacy and present urgency is strong. The music, its virtuoso creation and its definitively honest sounds overwhelm any sense of "production" or "engineering".
The ten songs hint at stories of perseverance, resilience and endurance. Shapes, images, moods and tiny details are offered. Our own imaginations are tempted out of hiding and swept along with the tunes.
"Cry, Cry Baby" is a stark acceptance of "good enough", with a scarily hung ending. The string quartet asserts a confident equal voice from bar eight. From here on Nina has company that shares her mood and coaxes the poetry of her songs out into the daylight.
"Moves Away" keeps the string quartet, adds woodwind and speaks of a tiny escape.
On "You're A Holy Man" proper horns (English and French) take prominence and the scale moves outwards from the personal to the historical and theological dimensions of holiness. There is a hint of mistrust and some understated but telling electric guitar. The horn solo is a treat.
"You Can Take Your Time" is good advice to someone who (we suspect) might not want to take it from someone (it seems) who wishes their troubles were as small. Recognisable, but unsettling just the same.
"This Familiar Way" has starkly heart-breaking lyrics that deftly sketch a lifetime of romantic denial. Musically, the emergent tango and its plaintive oboe seem to put a distance between the story and its New York author. So the illusion that this is her personal experience is, perversely, all the stronger. Using the phrase "blackened air" teases the listener further. This earlier album title seems to hint that, this time, the song really is autobiographical. Uncertainty is part of the delight.
"What's Out There" has theatrical drama. It's there in the voice and the dynamics as well as in the lyric. Strings hint at classic black and white film score, with a Hitchcock moment in a wilder pizzicato passage as what is out there breaks in.
The bleakness of "A Kind Of Courage" seems to be a distillation of the lonely refusal to despair that haunts this album. The words are shockingly sparse. "no one is holding our hand / we are always alone".
"Wakes" (in the funereal sense) has the warmth of Bryan's piano and the chill of the repeated "I can’t mend this living". It's a hard one to settle down with.
"One Way Out" offers a grander tune and Nina's carefully played guitar. Her voice sounds especially intimate and the guitar notes are beautifully enunciated. It's a healing, still moment after the storms.
It is also a preparation for the grandeur of "Outlaster" itself. I can hear a hint of Dvorak in the orchestration here. Perhaps it’s the oboe, but it’s certainly evocative of American hope and a mythic Eastern seaboard. Her voice is fragile, and almost breaks at one point. The strength of those string lines hint at optimism and the final chords are serene.
With it's beautiful restraint and the sublime performances by all concerned, this is a perfect album. The songs themselves shine out, in all their anxiety and doubt, and seem to give us the comfort that their author (I sense) might be denying herself.
