2011 album by Boston, Massachusetts indie folk artist Marissa Nadler. Eleven of the enchanting, spectral folk songs that Marissa is the master of. Produced by Brian McTear.

It’s almost strange to hear the gloom lift on Marissa Nadler’s eponymous new album, as her usual warbling, ominous digressions on loss and death give way to something approaching hope. In this sense, her first effort on her own label, can also be seen as a sort of rebirth, with a concerted shift in the direction of Nadler’s songwriting.

Nadler’s primary asset has always been her voice. It’s exquisite, the kind of vibrato-tinged instrument that earns repeated comparisons to mythological sirens, but it also imposes an antique feeling on the music, marking it with a high-toned weirdness that makes it sound strangely out of time. This can be limiting, and in some ways has forced Nadler into a timeless dreamscape thick with repeating themes, self-referencing lyrics, and an endless air of melancholy.

Marissa Nadler still retains the ghostly inscrutability that has always kept the singer’s insistent weepiness from sounding pathetic. But for the first time, Nadler seems not completely preoccupied with the power of death or the imperfect fragility of nearly everything, finding time, at least musically, for other emotions. Little Hells was an impressive album: fragile, beautiful, steeped in an eerie carnival atmosphere, even if it represented a terminus for frosty songs about dead flowers studded with Sylvia Plath references. Marissa Nadler, extending from the thaw of the hibernation-themed opener “In Your Lair, Bear,” seems like a definite step toward the light. (Slant magazine)

CD and digipak are in excellent condition.

Track list

1 In Your Lair, Bear 2 Alabaster Queen 3 The Sun Always Reminds Me Of You 4 Mr John Lee Revisited 5 Baby I Will Leave You In The Morning 6 Puppet Master 7 Wind Up Doll 8 Wedding 9 Little King 10 In A Magazine 11 Daisy, Where Did You Go?