While trauma is universal, it is also your own private hell. Living with trauma is something we all get to experience at some point and the question, inevitably, is how you get over it. Because, as Nina Nastasia puts it in "Just Stay In Bed", 'death is a terrible place to stay long'.
I am all for describing the actual music, and we are getting to it soon enough, but the story of Nina Nastasia is so tightly intertwined with her musical career that I will have to say a few words.
Nina Nastasia more or less vanished from the music scene following the excellent Outlaster (2010). She had released six albums of undeniable quality, and then she disappeared. Once a year, I would initiate an Internet search that would lead me nowhere. A brief mention, a rare live performance, a weird photo, a misjudged Christmas song, and nothing else. Which was both odd and disheartening in view of her past brilliance ("Ugly Face", "Judy's In The Sandbox", "Counting Up Your Bones", "What She Doesn't Know"... the list is endless). Then, however, after a decade of oblivion, she has resurfaced with a new album and a painful personal story.
There is no reason why I should be recounting the story here - basically, there is no need to. The story is all here, in each one of these dark, elegant, striking songs. Let's just say there was abuse, and a great deal of love, and then the person committed suicide.
Riderless Horse is Nina Nastasia's way of getting over the last decade, and it is a difficult album. Both lyrically and musically. There is little light to these melodies, and the elegant waltz of "Just Stay In Bed" is frankly harrowing. As is the emotional intensity of "Nature". Steve Albini is back producing and the old sound, too, is back. Chamber folk with dark undertones - only darker, much darker this time. Which is not to say that the tunes are not pretty. They are, and this is typically sharp songwriting from Nina Nastasia. "Afterwards" is a desperately beautiful closer. "Blind as Batsies" is deceptively upbeat. And "Is This Love" is worthy of anything you may remember from Dogs or On Leaving. Instrumentally, it is Nina's voice and the acoustic guitar. Just the way it used to be.
It is a painfully short album, just a little over 30 minutes, and there is not much hope anywhere in sight. However, there is an odd hope in the title - but mostly in the very fact that this album has actually been released. Played, sung, and released.
