April 9, 2002 by A.S. Van Dorston

Nina Nastasia’s sophomore album is most likely the first you’ve heard from her. Her debut Dogs (2000) was released in a small batch of handmade editions on the tiny indie Socialist label, and was good enough to melt even the hard, black heart of Steve Albini, who hasn’t been seen so speechlessly smitten over a female solo artist since PJ Harvey nearly a decade ago. Like Dogs, The Blackened Air was recorded by Albini, featuring a skeletal folk structures with chamber-like arrangements of accordian, cello, viola, mandolin and saw. The atmosphere recalls Cat Power’s (Chan Marshall) haunting Moon Pix recorded with The Dirty Three, and Touch And Go labelmate Shannon Wright’s eerie echoes of vaudeville cabaret. Her voice at first sounds deceptively girly and soft. Once you are drawn in and comfortable, cracks appear in the tunes’ fabric, and seemingly innocent folk songs come crashing down in terrifying cacophony.

The songs are surprisingly short for how much they accomplish. For example, In “I Go With Him,” Nastasia begins with some lovely guitar picking worthy of Nick Drake and Richard Thompson, tosses off two stanzas of earthy, biblical perfection that Will Oldham would envy, and peaks and fades in orchestral creepiness like Paris 1919 era John Cale, all in 1:54. “This Is What It Is” is pure gothic menace, with an accordian drone, marching strings, the lyrics a Zen riddle — “Take it out/Start again/Close it up/Be the one/You are beautiful/I couldn’t take a bigger bite of it…Lose your head/It’s always there/It’s full of it.” “Oh My Stars” brilliantly makes use of far Eastern melodies to timelessly elegant effect. “All For You” takes the form of more traditional country-folk, but it’s just as moving as she sings to a wonderful melody, “I can see the stars above/I can give it all up/Up to you/All for you.” In “So Little” and “Desert Fly,” Nastasia’s no-frills voice steps it up a notch, soaring and lilting, totally carrying the songs. “In The Graveyard” she really belts it out, a heart-wrenching funeral lament, a shadow of strength hiding behind doubt and fear. “Ocean” is the album’s climactic peak in which Nastasia’s stature swells with her passion, protesting a dying relationship — “‘Don’t run away from me!,’ I tell you/My eyes are black as iron/I’m toppling houses, trees and towns,/My crying makes everybody drown.” So powerful and compelling is Nina Nastasia’s artistry, we can only hope to go along with its flow, keeping our heads above the floodwaters so that we may survive and listen to her again, and again, and again.