Marissa Nadler Profile Page
Marissa Nadler grew up in a small town in Massachusetts, where perhaps the brutal winters bred into her a chilly disposition and an early propensity for the darker and more melancholy side of things. After spending her childhood painting, she began to play some guitar. There was a brief forray into the punk rock world playing electric guitar in an all girl band. It was then and there she realized she wasn't cut out for that kind of thing. She grew back her hair and started writing songs after years of obsessively listening to Joni Mitchell, Nina Simone, and Bessie Smith. After home recording two full length records she deemed unlistenable, Marissa Nadler released a cover of a Pearls Before Swine song on a compilation put out by a
Albums by Marissa Nadler
| Cover | Artist / Album | Media | Category | Rating | User Rating | Buy |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
![]() | Marissa Nadler Songs Iii: Bird On The Water (Peacefrog 2007) | N | Roots / Singer/Songwriter | 4/5 | 0/10 | |
![]() | Marissa Nadler The Saga Of Mayflower May (Eclipse 2005) | Y | Roots / Singer/Songwriter | 4.5/5 | 0/10 | |
![]() | Marissa Nadler Ballads of Living and Dying (Eclipse 2004) | N | Roots / Singer/Songwriter | 4.5/5 | 0/10 |

Marissa's music is very dreamy and atmospheric: an amalgam of traditional folk, paisley underground , shoegaze, and dream pop. Almost all of the songs are very sad, about broken hearts, death, or simple burdens. Her voice is what most people immediately respond, with the writing and playing having a slow burn subtelty. She plays lots of stringed instruments but guitar and 12 string guitar she is most skillful at. She sings songs of the sea, the haunting chansons of maidens, the cowboy ditties of ranchers, and the funerary processions of mourners. The eerie quality of her atmospheric music gives her songs a timelessnesand sadness that is often described as other worldly.
Marissas first LP Ballads of Living and Dying in 2004, was a release that Pitchfork called a landscape you may want to get lost in for a century or two," and that The Wire called a beauty. Ballads of Living and Dying was released in the UK in early February of 2005 by Beautiful Happiness Records, meeting the same response overseas as it did in the States,with the Guardian calling it uncommonly lovely...hard to get out of your head.
'The Saga of Mayflower May was released the following year, and has garnered the same acclaim as did Ballads of Living and Dying, with Pitchfork calling it, among other things, simply an "entralling album" Marissa's new full length record, "Bird on the Water" will be released by Peacefrog records (Jose Gonzales, Nouvelle Vague) in January, 2006. Marissa is also the lead singer of the dream pop - psych surf band "The Ivy and the Clover Girl"
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