Nastasia, Nina: The Blackened Air (180g-clear) LP

At first, this sophomore album from New Yorker Nina Nastasia, with her reedy girlish drawl, sounds merely appealing, like nice background music--but that impression lasts for about a minute. The strings (Dylan Willemsa's viola) conjure John Cale, and the shuffling rhythms (Jay Bellerose on drums) defy convention. Besides, there's an edge to Nastasia's voice--creepy and foreboding--that Nick Drake and Nico touched on, and that Chan Marshall and Will Oldham both cultivate in their own ways. Despite that dark urban folk vibe, Nastasia's inner workings seem more lucid, more honest, and well, more optimistic. Even during "Ugly Face," the waltz in the middle of the album, when she's singing, "I want to strike you," and even when, on "In the Graveyard," she howls at a ghost she's not yet ready to recognize. With an impeccably firm grip on songwriting, Nastasia has a way of gently plucking--her vocal cords, her guitar strings, and your heartstrings alike--at just the right moments. The Blackened Air may have been engineered to give shivers, but Nastasia and company make it seem effortless. The pulsating darkness that prevails here isn't especially stifling or manipulative; it's beautiful, airy and open, like her voice. And like death and the darker aspects of life, it's a magical and sultry force to be reckoned with. --Cyndi Elliott