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The term “freak-folk” is often bandied about when describing Boston-area musician Marissa Nadler’s work.

She recently stopped by her alma mater RISD to talk about artistic process and what drives her to create. Along the way, she cheerfully upended all the usual clichés attached to her music: “sepia-toned,” “ethereal” and “death-obsessed.”

A funny, down-to-earth presence, she was refreshingly open about her struggles with stage fright, as well as those of balancing painting and music.

“There’s a mythology that surrounds my work,” she said. “But that’s not who I am. It’s just what comes out in the music.”

A self-taught guitarist and singer who’s been writing songs since she was a teenager, she didn’t begin playing in public until she arrived at RISD in the early 2000s. Upon receiving her MAT in 2004, she taught briefly, but has been touring and playing music ever since.

After the intensity of school, she stopped painting for a long time. But she’s recently picked up the paintbrush again. She’s also started selling hand-crafted CDRs, original paintings and needlework items on Etsy.

As an artist, she doesn’t draw lines between her music and her painting and illustration work —it’s all part of a continuum. An obsessive creator by nature, she admits, “It’s hard to balance the two.” But she says it’s getting easier.

I’m posting a couple of older tracks here: “Mexican Summer,” the luminous single from her 2006 album Songs III: Bird On The Water, and the Daniel Johnston classic “True Love Will Find You in the End,” from her 2010 collection of covers.

(Pay special attention to her exquisite trio of Townes van Zandt covers.)

Her new album, due out in spring 2011, will be self-released. Visit Marissa’s Bandcamp site for more info. She’s also on Twitter.

Marissa Nadler, “Mexican Summer” (from Songs III: Bird On The Water, 2006)

Marissa Nadler, “True Love Will Find You in the End” (from Covers, 2010)

STILLS FROM BILL MORRISON’S FILM DECASIA FOUND VIA JANVANEYCK’S FLICKR SET OF FILM STILLS.

The Woodmans (C. Scott Willis, 2010) will be screening at Providence’s Cable Car Cinema from January 28-February 3.

Images:
Francesca Woodman, “Untitled (Providence),” 1975-78
Claude Cahun, “Je Tends les Bras”
Paul Nougé, “Le Bras Révelateur,”1929
Jean Cocteau, Still from La Belle et La Bête

Amp, “Ombres” (from Amp/3EF/Sadaar Bazaar split 7″, 1996)

His Name Is Alive, “Caroline’s Supposed Demon” (from Livonia, 1990)

Gray, “Wig” (from Shades of…, 2010)

It’s impossible to believe that Broadcast’s Trish Keenan is no longer with us. Shockingly, she passed away on Friday after a two-week battle with pneumonia.

From the moment I heard Broadcast’s first EP, The Book Lovers, I was hooked on their fractal pop, even if my initial impression of them was “Stereolab-lite.” (How wrong I was.)

The group gained strength with each release, creating music that was at once brazenly experimental and multidimensional, containing worlds upon worlds of influences in an evocative framework of puzzlebox lyrics and kitchen-sink psychedelia. Cinematic and sweeping, their songs were also dramatic and poignant, thanks to Keenan’s incisive lyrics and heartwrenchingly pure voice.

http://warp.net/swf/warp_embed.swf

Writing a tribute for webzine Caught by the River, St. Etienne’s Bob Stanley wrote,

“As attuned to pop and melody as she was to experimentalism, Trish wrote some beautiful lyrics: ‘Come On Let’s Go’ is a declaration of romantic independence (‘what’s the point in wasting time on people that we’ll never know?’); ‘Tears In The Typing Pool’ is a small town, small romance break up song of terrible sadness (‘The letters are sighing, the ink is still drying/I told you the truth and now I sigh too’); ‘Before We Begin’ an inspiring manifesto of winking hope (‘So here we are again, back to the beginning/So the salt will spill again, throw it over your shoulder’).”

Keenan’s honeyed vocals were always the calm point at the center of Broadcast’s kaleidoscopic, fragmented pop. Like their beloved Czech films from the 1960s (Valerie and Her Week of Wondersand Milos Forman’s Loves of a Blonde were particular touchstones, as was Hammer horror and British children’s television), their music was constantly engaged in a push-pull against convention.

For Keenan, psychedelia had a kind of utopian power. In 2009, she told The Wire’s Joseph Stannard,

“That’s what makes bands like The United States of America special: they represent for me a better 60s, one without sexism or racism, It always seems as though music is ahead of political correctness, or social thought.”

The Britain of her formative years, the 80s, was horrifically hidebound.

“I discovered psychedelia and it seemed to have self-help properties that allowed me to let go of an immobilizing working class pride that was cementing a false identity in my psyche, stopping me from transforming.”

Broadcast began as a five-piece and eventually settled on the core duo of Trish and James Cargill. Moving from Birmingham to the British countryside helped cement their roots in British folk traditions. Their work became increasingly curatorial, drawing on myriad influences to fascinating effect. Their final release, 2009’s Broadcast & the Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults Of The Radio Age (Warp), hinted at an equally tantalizing future —one that will, sadly, never come to pass.

Broadcast: A Statement (Warp)

Broadcast & the Focus Group, “Love’s Long Listen-in” (from Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age, 2009)

The United States of America, “Garden of Earthly Delights”

Lubos Fiser, “Disquiet” (Original Soundtrack)