music movies tv games books culture blogs shop mPlayer Home > Music > Features Band of the Week: Nina Nastasia and Jim White BY GAVIN PAUL GIOVAGNOLI Published at 11:28 AM on December 3, 2007 Like 0 Tweet 0 Hometown: Hollywood, Calif. (Nina Nastasia); Melbourne, Australia (Jim White) Fun Fact: Nastasia doesn’t own a single record. Nor does she consider herself a “music person” or one who “goes to record stores, browses around and collects records.” Why They’re Worth Watching: The duo hit complexities with just a guitar and drum kit that rival 100-piece orchestras. Paired with the simultaneously tender and treacherous dynamic of Nastasia’s pipes, an especially poignant brand of folk is forged. For Fans Of: Neko Case, Joni Mitchell, Cat Power Nina Nastasia didn't find her way to making music like many of her contemporaries. Growing up in Hollywood, not involved in any particular music scene, she ADVERTISE WITH PASTE didn’t even play an instrument. Her most vivid memory is an Oingo Boingo show at the Whisky A Go Go. Even when she moved to New York on a whim, she didn’t pick up a guitar for another four years, and it LATEST was only for fun, an escape from the hell of a waitressing gig. To this day, now in her thirties, Nastasia does not buy records. LIST OF THE DAY Six Musicians Discuss Johnny Cash and At Folsom Prison But as soon as she started recording, she immediately blossomed into a genuine singer-songwriter presence. It was then she began emoting otherwise simple, melancholic folk pluckings about failed CULTURE FEATURES dreams and broken relationships, transforming them into wise, old-soul territory, mostly just by virtue of Tweets of the Week her God-given voice, capable of both swelling and crushing a heart in a single breath. It’s not technical prowess that makes Nastasia's music so affecting, even with Steve Albini helming the LIST OF THE DAY 2013 Golden Globes: Predictions studio knobs. But Albini, as with most things he touches, accentuates everything; every lingering vibrato and Proclamations slowly smoke-wisps away, every drumbeat punctuates a sentiment. Nastasia’s debut, Dogs (2000), is one of the loudest quiet records of the last 10 years. Albini has said the record is “so simultaneously GIVING BACK Drink Beer, Help Hurricane Sandy unassuming and grandiose that [he] can’t really describe it, except in terms that would make it [and him] Victims sound silly.” MOVIE FEATURES So it was natural that Albini would continue to work with Nina, producing her next three records via his Black Sites and Gray Areas: In defense of Kathryn Bigelow and favored label, Chicago’s Touch and Go. It was also through Albini that Nastasia would meet Aussie Zero Dark Thirty drummer, Jim White, of Australian instrumental band Dirty Three, of which Albini was a friend. “We TV NEWS needed a drummer, kind of last minute for Run to Ruin (2003),” Nastasia recalls. “Kennan [Nastasia’s Watch Entire 30 Rock Cast on boyfriend and musical arranger] and I were fans of Dirty Three. And, of course, Jim’s drumming. Steve Fallon connected us. I think we had one rehearsal, and then we all went to this Mexican restaurant and hung AWESOME OF THE DAY out.” Tarantino to British Journalist: "I'm WATCH & LISTENNot Your Slave" As run-of-the-mill as this story may sound, it led to You Follow Me, a marrying of Nastasia’s trademark Video Premiere coffee-shop guitar with some of the most improvisational drumming White could jazz up. Except, it’s not ARTICLES improvised at all. Rather, it's extremely calculated, in the same way that Albini accentuates his DeepFred Dark Armisen Woods, to RodneyCo-Host This American Life as "Fake Ira Glass" productions. It's in this way that the combination blurs the line between who’s leading whom, hence the Crowell… album title. “Sometimes Jim takes over, sometimes I do,” Nastasia says. “We wanted everything to be very SongARTICLES Premiere specific.” HolopawApple, - Inc."We Dismisses Are The… Rumors of Cheaper iPhones At just over a half hour, You Follow Me is the little record that could. It maximizes every playful verse (“I don’t believe in the power of love/ I don’t believe in the wisdom of stone”) with a tom-tom sputter (“Our VideoMUSIC Premiere NEWS New Jimi Hendrix Songs Set to Discussion”). Every bar chord is punched with a quick bass-cymbal snap (“In The Evening”). And every DrewPremiere & Ellie on Holcomb CBS’ Hawaii -… Five-O tortured sentiment (“This is the way/ everything changes”) is supplemented with a flurry of snare brushes. It’s so spacious and so thick with some of the simplest sounds. And yet, so innocent. VideoTV Premiere REVIEWS 1600 Penn Review: "The Skiplantic Day Ocean"Joy - "Go (Episode To… 1.02) “I’m not a person who really knows bands and what’s going on,” Nastasia insists. Even if she is playing the modest card, it’s another example of how greater less is than more. more... ARTICLES The Avett Brothers Announce Check out Paste's December/January 4 to Watch artists: Additional U.S. Tour Dates PASTE The Wombats ESSENTIALS Vampire Weekend A/V The 50 Best Albums of Video Premiere: Deep Dark Woods, Ingrid Michaelson 2012 Rodney Crowell - Live from the Americana Music Convention White Shoes & The Couples Company The 50 Best Songs of 2012 MOVIE NEWS ABC Executive Reveals Details on Check out who's been on the cover of mPlayer. 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