Fat Cat [Caroline]
2006
On Leaving.
About This Album
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. On Leaving is different. The charts have been stripped back to the very bone here. A piano, a small string section instead of a bass, the acoustic guitar, and Jim White's (Dirty Three) drumming, make for a small, spiny recording that is wrapped in notions of restlessness, passage, travel, change. Memory takes its place at the head of a labyrinthine road beginning with the album's opening track, "In Jim's Room." A single fingerpicked guitar playing an abbreviated chord sequence ushers us in as White's tom toms underscore Nastasia's vocal lines. The viola and cello (arranged by Dylan Willemsa) play shimmering sounds, rather like melodic accents slipping through the lyric: "For a month I wasn't me/A thief would wait for me outside/There were nights I wouldn't let him in.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 and 9)

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