Nina Nastasia

Nina Nastasia an accomplished musician, songwriter and performer who currently makes her home in New York, but she's playing at the Bar Bodega on Friday night with Jim White (out of Aussie week-long-musical-wake post-rockers The Dirty Three).

An uncredited writer once wrote:

Nina Nastasia's rare gift of a voice is an intimate, winged presence that is able to either freeze or melt your heart, that can powerfully soar and twist, or brush ultra-gently against you, suddenly summoning goose bumps. Mojo commented on its ability to "suck the air out of the room". Picking over themes of love, longing and loss, childhood, dreams and human dramas, her beautifully concise, hook-laden songwriting and the spare arrangements of her band have a certain gritty, rustic charm and intensity. Simultaneously tough and fragile, her songs crackle and smoulder with an intimate emotional honesty and a dark undertow.

Listen here:

Nina Nastasia - This is what it is (5.9 MB mp3: right-click and Save As to download)

And while you're listening, here are the edited highlights from the Allmusic.com review of the album hence this song comes:

Just how beautiful? Remarkably beautiful, though it's far from a smooth train ride. Backed by a skilled cast of musicians who take on the standard rock band instrumentation plus. Nina Nastasia spins her lazy, elegantly adorned tales with a voice that effortlessly slips into your ears. Lines like "I want you...I want you...I want to strike you" fall from her mouth as if she doesn't want to wake the slumbering partner lying next to her, conflicted between lust and dread. This record flows so easily that it sounds as if it made itself. Engineer Steve Albini should be commended. Intimate, delicate, and laced with greatness, one of those records that only takes one listen to be justly evaluated as special and timeless. The pain is sweet.

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