by Sam Goblin (@drmistergoblin)
There’s really no way to say this without sounding like a fanboy, but I am what I am: Nina Nastasia is easily my favorite songwriter of all time. I don’t even really know how to articulate why without sounding like a tool, though I have no problem waxing poetic for hours about music that I hate. She has a wide and deeply rewarding catalog, and whether she’s framed by lush, intricate string arrangements like on The Blackened Air or just empty space as on her most recent solo record Riderless Horse, something in her songs sets things right for me in a way I’ll be extremely grateful for as long as I’m alive, and I’ll just leave it at that.
The stunning, disquieting Riderless Horse was her reintroduction to the music world after a decade-long hiatus. This silence was the result of a controlling and emotionally abusive relationship with long-term creative and romantic partner Kennan Gudjonsson, who died by suicide in January of 2020 shortly after Nastasia took the impossible step of wrenching herself from the relationship to preserve her own wellbeing.
If there can be such a thing as a silver lining to something so horrific, perhaps part of it is her new (and first) band Jolie Laide, which started as a startlingly productive long distance project with Jeff MacLeod (The Cape May, Florida BC) and has since grown into a full band. Talking to the two of them, it became clear why the band’s growth has been so propulsive. Besides obviously being close friends, they are stoked. Stoked on this project in a way that even young bands I talk to don’t seem to be anymore. Stoked in a limitless, ceilingness way that doesn’t bear the weight of expectation but still allows for all possible possibilities. Stoked, stoked! It was so nice, check it out:
photo credit: Heather Saitz
Sam: How are you all?
Jeff: I just went for a swim, working off a hangover. Went to a hockey game last night with Clint [the other singer of Jolie Laide] who’s going through something. Everyone’s going through something, so we just tied one on and—you know—not smart.
Nina: [laughs] Nice.
Sam: Tough times all around.
Jeff: So how are you?
Sam: Good, good. It’s my day off.
Jeff: What do you do?
Sam: I work in mental health.
Jeff: Oh great, I might need some emergency therapy. My life is falling apart.
Nina: [laughs] Jeff, you can’t get therapy from someone who’s interviewing you. That’s very dangerous.
Jeff: You’re right, I’m just kidding. Let’s talk about the band.
Sam: Did I see that you all are already working on a new album? Or have you finished it?
Nina: Yeah, we just need to do final mixes and master it, and then it’s done!
Jeff: We are done, I think thirteen songs. We’ll have to kill a couple, though. It happened very fast. Final mixes are in our inboxes now.
Nina: Oh, I have to give my notes! [laughs] I’m more excited about that band than anything else, because it’s just so fun. Now we’ve got these two other band members, so it feels like a complete thing. I mean, I think the first album already sounded that way but now it’s at a new level.
I’m so tired of being alone in it, nothing is more exciting than to hear somebody add to something you’ve done—to find a group where everybody’s contributing. I mean, it’s exciting to write your record by yourself and get it done, but then what do you do? There’s only so many times where Steve Albini can pick up the phone and go, “Yeah that was great, that was fun” [laughs].
Sam: So since the new one is shaping up, how does it feel for you all to look back at the debut? I feel like that’s a weird point in the process, you tend to look back at the last thing like, “Maybe that was some bullshit,” or maybe not [laughs].
Nina: I mean, I love it and I love that I don’t have any desire to redo it. It was basically Jeff doing a lot of the instrumentation, and it was such a simple back and forth that had such ease and flow to it. It was pretty great, I wouldn’t change any of it. There was a part of me that worried that the new one would sound like an entirely different band, but I really don’t think it does. I just think the first record sounds like a great introduction to what it ended up evolving into.
Jeff: I agree with everything Nina said, I do love that record. We did it remotely the first time around, and for this one we did it all in one studio with the two band members we wanted. The first one was more of a co-project that was something for me and Nina to do to stop us from going nuts.
Right after Kennan had passed I started sending Nina songs to keep her busy and distracted and I don’t think we even intended it to be a band until it was done. I had this guitar my Grandpa gave me in his will, and I plugged it into this old Traynor amp that was a wedding present to him. I plugged it in and it has this weird, old tone and just started playing this cinematic, spaghetti Western-sounding stuff. I’d send stuff to Nina and she’d send it back basically the same day and then I was like, are we a band?
Sam: That’s awesome. I feel like a lot of projects started during the pandemic but didn’t really get off the ground, sounds like this felt really serendipitous, though. Nina, this is kind of a cop-out of a question but how do you approach writing lyrics?
Jeff: She goes out onto a wooden ship and the water’s on fire.
Nina: That’s true [laughs]. I try to get out of writing bleak things, but I really do love that stuff. I like ugly subject matter and trying to make something pretty out of those kinds of stories. It’s hard to talk about the process of it. It was quite easy with what Jeff was bringing me because it evoked these visuals, and I could live in those landscapes. Sometimes when I’m writing on guitar I’ll just start with one word and piece the rest around that.
Jeff: I would say some of the stuff on this record is almost sunny, like “Move Away Towns” is this Bonnie and Clyde kind of thing. “Death of Money” too, maybe. There’s some sunnier stuff on this record that isn’t all exorcizing your demons or whatever. I mean, there is some really heavy stuff, too.
Nina: I try not to be completely without hope, because writing that way almost ends up as wallowing or feeling sorry for yourself. I don’t know if it’s a conscious thing or not, but I always want to have a little bit of sunny in there. It’s hard to know how these things work, some people are really good at articulating that sort of thing.
Sam: So on the new one do you continue the kind of really distinct guitar sound?
Jeff: We have this song called “Cheyenne” that has that, that one would be the closest to the s/t. The new album is a full duet, every single song both singers sing on. Morgan [from Baths] brought in this electronic stuff, sometimes he’d delete my drums or guitar parts and just put in synths or something. It’s a lot different, but there is a continuity. Nina doesn’t believe in magic, but I kind of do. There was something mystical happening for sure. It was also the most fun I’ve ever had making a record.
Nina: Clint is like, my favorite vocalist. I mean, I adore Bill Callahan, but Clint is just my favorite voice. I hear it and I’m just like, “Oh, I love that.”
Jeff: Yeah, he’s also on the first record if you listen to “Death of Money.”
Sam: Huh, Jeff I thought that might have been you singing on that one! I love that back and forth, though.
Jeff: I did actually write those lyrics and sing that chorus originally, but there was a resounding, “What the fuck is this?” [laughs]. Nina, what’s the thing you say? “What you’re doing is great, but…”
Nina: [laughs] I don’t say that, by the way.
Jeff: He was going to be on the first record more, but he was going through a lot of stuff, like divorce.
Nina: Yeah, divorce. Two brains cohabitating, it’s very difficult.
Sam: That’s a lot of brain.
Nina: A lot of brain to wrangle [all laugh]. But also, one brain is not enough! You just can’t go on with one brain, you need more brains.
Sam: Yeah, so what do you do?
Nina: Well, I got a dog! I’m not sure what happens after that. I don’t know how this works. In my experience, even an ideal situation just needs a lot of work.
Sam: I always wonder about these adorable old couples who are just holding hands at death’s door like, “I still love you.”
Nina: They met when they were about seventy [laughs].
Jeff: Or they have a brain tumor that’s really working for them.
Nina: Maybe it does work. I’ve definitely suffered enough that I’m coming to this conversation with a bit of a bad perspective. You have different needs at that age, too. Maybe if you can just get to eighty then it’s smooth sailing.
Jeff: Right, just get to eighty.