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 friend of hers, Jeffrey Alexander (The Iditarod, Black Forest/Black Sea). He was and still is a major figure in the Providence music scene, which also birthed one of the loudest bands in history, Lightening Bolt. The compilation was Marissa's first release, put out while Marissa was attending the Rhode Island School of Design for painting. She thought it was exciting to be on a real cd, and also exciting that Thurston Moore was on it. (For the Dead in Space, vol II) Her cover of Ballad of the Amber Lady was the first of many atmospheric and melancholy songs Marissa would record in the years to follow. It was then that she put away the blow torch she had been using to drip wax all over her paintings, put away the wood chisels for a while, and decided to persue music full time. After quitting a job teaching painting to kids in Harlem, Marissa left for a couple years of touring.

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.

Marissa’s 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"

Interview by Peter Kearns

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Boston-based singer/songwirter Marissa Nadler has recently released her fourth studio album, Little Hells.

I had the opporuntiy to speak with Marissa, here's how our conversation went:

T.O. Snob: Thanks for doing this. You're coming to Toronto on April 21st, what can people expact from your show?

Marissa Nadler: I thin a gentle, mellow, ethereal sound.

T.O. Snob: I think Little Hells is probably your best album yet. Do you consciously set out to try to surpass what you've done before?

MN: That's always the intention. As an artist you're always trying to grow and metamorphisis. I think it's often a matter of taste in what people like. Althoiugh I definitely hope that my best work is still ahead of me.

T.O. Snob: Do you ever feel pressure to grow or evolve?

MN: I think I have with this record and I hope to do so. But I don't feel pressure from other people. I did put some pressure on myself with this record to see what I was capable of doing.

T.O. Snob: Do you prefer writing and recording or performing in front of a live audience?

MN: Both actually. I'm really looking forward to going on tour this time around.

T.O. Snob: Your sound really pulls in a lot of eclectic influences, how did you develop it?

MN: A lot of it is from things I grew up listening to. I think I was listening to a lot of stuff like Joni Mitchell and Neil Young but also Mazzy Star. So its just a combination of what I grew up listening to.

T.O. Snob: Well you'll win points here in Canada by saying Joni Mitchell and Neil Young.

MN: Oh, and Leonard Cohen. The whole holy Canadian trinity of songwriting.

T.O. Snob: What inspires your lyrics? MN: My lyrics are pretty much directly a response to my life. They are very truthful lyrics.

T.O. Snob: Your songs have always come across as very literary and very literate. So that begs the question, have you read any good books lately?

MN: The last good book that I read was called The Secret Life of the Lonley Doll. It's a non-fiction book from a children's book writer Dare Wright. It's just a really good book.

T.O. Snob: If you could work with any artist in the world who would i t be?

MN: Living I would say I would love to write a soundtrack for David Lynch. I hope that he reads this.

T.O. Snob: If somebody were to come into your apartment and look at your CD collection is there anything there that would surprise them?

MN: Probably my heavy grunge rock stuff. The Hole CDs. I guess it's just the generation I grew up in.

T.O. Snob: Thanks again for doing this.

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