Marissa Nadler – New Radiations

Marissa Nadler announces her tenth album, New Radiations, arriving August 15 via Sacred Bones and Bella Union. The title track serves as both introduction and mission statement. Four years after her last full-length, the Nashville-based songwriter returns with what she describes as a raw, intimate collection that tackles the psychological toll of recent global upheaval.

The title track finds Nadler’s narrator “feeling stuck, depressed, and frozen in a world after a tough few years” as “psychic vibrations and new radiations” take their toll. A kind of cosmic darkness creeps into the psyche, though Nadler promises clarity emerges as “the screen shatters, the ice breaks, and a new world begins.” Her fingerpicking guitar work and otherworldly vocals create that distinctive haze that makes even acoustic songs feel like they’re drifting between dream states.

Self-produced at Nashville’s Haptown Studios and her home setup, New Radiations features arrangements by frequent collaborator Milky Burgess on guitar and synthesizers, with mixing handled by Randall Dunn.

The album represents Nadler processing the collective experience of difficult years while maintaining her signature ability to transform melancholy into something transcendent. H

At this point in her career, Nadler has mastered making music that sounds like it exists in its dimension, where personal and universal experiences blur together. New Radiations suggests she’s channelling recent collective trauma through her particular lens of dreamlike folk.