ATL Lo-fi/Bedroom-Pop Artist Nadia Marie Drops Her Desolate New Slowcore Single "Oh Denny"
Atlanta lo-fi / bedroom-pop artist Nadia Marie has just released her desolate new slowcore single, "Oh Denny". The track explores the exhausting cycle of-insecurity and jealousy.
The song comes from Nadia Marie's new album, Seven, out April 29th. The record finds her reflecting back on the last seven years of her life, during which she married a complete stranger, unexpectedly fell in love and bounced back from a near-fatal car crash. Seven fades in with a quiet cacophony. A soundscape unfolds with the static hum of wind in a microphone as wedding vows are exchanged in a relationship that will ultimately fracture. The voyeuristic moment marks the beginning of a seven-year stretch in the artist’s life—a time of pain, triumph, tragedy, isolation, struggle, contentment and vulnerability. A time she’s been thinking about a lot lately.
“You know, the body replaces itself with a new set of cells every seven years,” Nadia Marie says. “Seven is a very superstitious number. There are a lot of biblical references on the new record. A back and forth between science, myth and superstition.”
Seven combines audio clips from Nadia’s real life—field recordings from her wedding, train rides while living in Tokyo, conversations with her former partner, even her own heartbeat keeping time. The music is dark, sparse and reflective, leaving plenty of space to crawl inside and stay a while. Slowly pulsing rhythms pump like comatose heartbeats, awakening occasionally to propel gurgling synths, hypnotic piano and washes of cascading, angelic harp. Nadia Marie plays everything on the album, save for the sax and trombone on “Alligator Proof,” the former courtesy of Tyler Jundt (Material Girls) and the latter from Keifer Johnson (Jermaine Dupree, Mattiel, Blackberry Smoke). She also wrote, produced, recorded and mixed Seven herself in her bedroom. The set is woven together by the intricate threads of Nadia Marie’s expressive, often provocative vocals and her singular artistic and conceptual vision.
“I was interested in exploring the tension—what I would call the cyclical regurgitation—between the seven deadly sins and the seven stages of grief,” Nadia says. “I've lost a lot of people in my life, and it's easy to fall into coping mechanisms that might be considered sinful. Which makes things even more difficult since you're not just grieving the loss of a person, but also the mistakes you’ve made. The new album is about how the seven deadly sins and seven stages of grief feed off each other. The songs feel sinful to me, mournful—there’s a lot of guilt. They deal with survival and reflection, the push and pull of grief, and also the fall out that comes from surviving.”
Listen to Nadia’s brand new single, “Oh Denny”, right now, and connect with her on her website and IG. Also, be on the lookout for “Seven”, out April 29th.