Riderless Horse＜Colored Vinyl＞

It would be nice to report that it was a happy turn of events that led to Nina Nastasia releasing her first album after 12 years away from recording, 2022s Riderless Horse. However, given the often dour and intense nature of her work, its sadly fitting that it took a terrible personal tragedy to bring these songs to life. Kennan Gudjonsson had been Nastasias manager, producer, arranger, and accompanist since she first began performing in public. They were also in a long-term romantic relationship that had become more troubling as the years went on, and in January 2020, Nastasia told Gudjonsson she was leaving him. The next day, he committed suicide. As Nastasia struggled with her grief, her guilt, and her memories of what was good and what was hurtful in her relationship, she began writing songs again. With the help of her frequent studio ally Steve Albini and Greg Norman, a colleague from Albinis Electrical Audio Studio, she created Riderless Horse, which even by her standards is a strikingly intimate piece of work. The album was recorded with Nastasias guitar as the only accompaniment for her vocals, and this presentation captures every nuance of her delivery while also giving her nowhere to hide. The raw emotions of "This Is Love" are impossible to miss ("I guess Ill just stay in Hell with you if this is love/ Throw a punch or two and take a few, then rise above"), while "Nature" finds her making excuses for her partners flaws with little conviction, and "Ask Me" is so filled with genuine love and firmly held dread that its hard to say which one wins out. Even the relatively sweet "Just Stay in Bed" is the sound of someone trying to shut out the world, and "The Roundabout" is a song of rejection thats so kind it could pass for a love song. Nastasia sounds firmly in control at every moment, but she still makes the emotions honest and direct on each track, while her guitar playing adds just the right accents, not complicated but too perfect in its emotional expression to be called simple. Albini and Normans production and engineering are beautifully naturalistic, the sound of a musician alone in a room giving a powerful performance for the microphone, with all the details adding to its effect. One might expect something different from Nina Nastasia after 12 years in retirement, and Riderless Horse does indeed present her in a new way, though the remarkable talent that was on display in her previous work is still here, as powerful and moving as ever. ~ Mark Deming