Nina Nastasia
On Leaving
Release Date: Oct 3, 2006
Genre(s): Indie, Rock, Singer-Songwriter
Record label: Fat Cat
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Album Review: On Leaving by Nina Nastasia
Excellent, Based on 2 Critics
Based on rating 8/10
It's been three years since Nina Nastasia released Run to Ruin on Touch & Go. The indie label also re-released her 1999 debut Dogs, making On Leaving her first new recording in three years and her debut on Fat Cat. While Nastasia is well-known for her minimal arrangements and Southern Gothic approach to purging hurt, rage, and disappointment, it was always held in beautifully by her elegantly simple but arresting voice.
Opinion: Mediocre
Nina Nastasia’s Run to Ruin from 2003 is just over half-an-hour long, yet it folds more menace and mystery into those minutes than most records twice its length. By taking the gothic mid-American trappings of The Blackened Air for a stroll around the twin bicoastal centers, Nastasia accomplishes something amazing – the soundtrack to a kind of modern daylight noir, with all of the ferocity and sadness of a great Robert Mitchum movie. Her fractured narratives tiptoe past grimy cashier windows, paper-thin motel walls, and broken glass boardwalks, into the lives of individuals who can’t escape their lonely urban peripheries.