Nina Nastasia

Not everyone likes pretty. And not everyone does it well. There is something so deceptively easy about Nina Nastasia’s way with a song. It doesn’t insist with its beauty, it’s just there, regardless of whether you notice it or not. Nastasia first came to most people’s attention with The Blackened Air, and followed it with the even darker Run to Ruin, but Dogs is in fact her first album. It was released on her own label, Socialist, and quickly went out of print due to word of mouth and a few good words from John Peel. The arrangements are simple and always immaculate, incorporating strings and saws and brushes, heavy with space. The singing saw is just another character in her stories, the whine of a ghostly dog following his own path, ambling through the record and leaving aching hearts in his wake.