Marissa Nadler: s/t

Label: Box of Cedar

When an experienced artist decides that her fifth album will be self-titled, you can expect something like...well, like what we get with Marissa Nadler's new work. To be sure, pretty much everything Nadler has done to this point has been met with an amount of critical wonder, mainly as a result of her essentially perfect voice, a genre unto itself. On this album, Nadler becomes herself in full—which is something nobody would have thought was lacking in the past, but how else to describe this incredible record? A bit more mature, a bit more confident—though maturity and confidence never seemed to be missing before—Nadler at times sounds like Hope Sandoval with a pulse (not to mention far greater range) on these 11 songs, highlights each: "Daisy, Where Did You Go?" ends the album, and if your heart hadn't stopped by that point.... Marissa Nadler is destined to always be thought of as a folk artist—the acoustic guitar, the timeless-mystic mien—but if there's one thing she proves on this album, it's that she cannot be bounded. Please add her to your life and improve it.