On her third album, Run to Ruin, Nina Nastasia conducted a musical séance,
shrouding her tunes in black-hearted shadows, stripping back arrangements so
much that the disc dealt solely in the ghostly. It seemed, in such, less the
work of Nastasia, and more the work of Nastasia And Band, with the tracks derived
from the divinations of the whole combo, the songsmith's songs wrung out long
and slow whilst her familiar family of players dangled spooky soundtrack-isms
of bowed strings all over this communed craft. It was, for me, almost a little
too wistful, its dust and cobwebs and haunting spirits all things that could
easily be blown away by the barest of breezes. All this becomes incredibly clear,
now, with the reissue of Dogs, Nastasia's largely-unheard debut album.
Here, Nastasia's craft is presented in a straightforward setting, her first foray
finding the artist delivering the best tunes of her life up to that point, with
the band present strictly as "backing." Whilst the contributions of others can
occasionally be dramatic — like the furious flurries of squalling scraped
strings on "Jimmy's Rose Tattoo," or the, uh, hot-lickin' guitar solo on "Nobody
Knew Her" — any of the other instruments are always paying deference to
Nastasia's voice, lyrics, chords and melodies. There are even moments here where,
blessedly, things're pared right back: the blissful neo-folksong "4yrs" is just
Nastasia and some strummed chords, and "Smiley" just cascading jags of electric
guitar backed by some droning piano-accordion. Whilst these moments are the most
pared-down, instrument-wise, they're both robust in their delivery, Nastasia's
pure voice pushed right up forward, expertly mic'd by microphone-fetishist Steve
Albini so as to catch every gentle exhalation and unsticking of lips. Long before
her voice wandered lonely as a cloud through the vaudevillian strings of her
baroque band, and even longer before her band seemed to step gingerly through
implied tunes, here Nastasia never fears to tread into singer/songwriter territories — the
best bit being that, as singer/songwriter, she has an impressive way with words
and works. Over delicate fingerpicking on "All Your Life," Nastasia authors a
stunning song from stark simplicity, her deadpan couplet "heroin/ makes you thin" dueling
with a chorus in which the simple repetition of "she's never coming back" is
made profound by the purity of the vocalist's voice, something that stirs again
in "Too Much in Between," where the cooing of "ooh, too much in between" is suitably
staggering. Where her subsequent albums seemed to try and contrive mood, with Dogs Nina
Nastasia lets the sentiments of her songs make the emotional pitch, and this
record is all the more beautiful, powerful, and meaningful for it.
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