The Sister

As heart-stopping as The Sister is, though, it feels more like an appendix to her body of work than a fresh, essential sequel.

These songs are like pearls, lustrous, unknowable and happiest next to bare skin.

At just eight tracks, The Sister never outstays its welcome, and by the time it's finished, you're likely to want to go straight back to the start. And if this is your first introduction to Nadler, you'll want to explore her back catalogue straight away.

The surrounding material is all solid, if not to be ranked as some of her best stuff.

The Sister is Marissa Nadler looking down and realizing that she has recently written eight good songs.

This is a singer's album, one that luxuriates in the pure, lovely tones of Nadler's warmly intimate, darkly insistent voice. [No.87 p.57]

The Sister is another fine record in Nadler's growing catalogue, yet one tied more to the well-trodden tropes (lyrically, stylistically) she's built her name on than we've grown accustomed.

The Sister ultimately comes across as, at best, a retread done well and, at worst, a retreat into previously approved territory by an artist who has noticeably improved as a tactician.

The electronic experiments introduced on Little Hells continue to bloom and her character building is peerless.

The decision to rein in the forward-thinking, more ambitious, and colorful musical and textural steps she made on her last recording makes this rather monochromatic affair feel somewhat longer than its scant 33 minutes.

Nadler's shortest and sparsest full-length yet. The decision to limit it to little more than a handful of tracks ensures it's succinct and absent of any songs I could comfortably call 'bad' or even 'not good,' but it also means there's no room for any of the risks that made her older work so fresh and adventurous.

The one place where The Sister falters, and where it falls just short of its predecessor, is that it doesn't always take advantage of that layering [of music from her supporting musicians].... With so few songs here, these moments of isolation seem to take up too much time on a short record about building a bridge back to the world of the living.

A few tracks wisp away into nothingness, but on work like "Your Heart is a Twisted Vine," Nadler approaches timelessness as well.

It's a bit disappointing to see her regress from the bold moves she made on 2011's Marissa Nadler, but it seems to be the trade-off we've made for The Sister's lyrical clarity.