Nina Nastasia & Jim White – You Follow Me
This set of ten songs in a duo setting has all the exuberant sense of discovery associated with jazz pairings, and none of the rote mannerisms often found in folk-volume guitar-based music. Nina Nastasia’s voice and guitar playing have a liquidity that allows her melodic sensibility to swoop around and through the strumming and picking. Her guitar offers up by turns rhythmically muscular chords and quietly shimmering note-by-note articulations. Drummer Jim White (of Dirty Three) is less an additive to these songs than an essential component. He moves easily between foundation work and giddy rooftop filigree. On “Odd Said The Doe”, his swirling rolls add an emotional bearing, and throughout he inhabits the core of the songs like a second singer. Beholden to nothing other than their own artistic inclinations, these songs straddle genres, discarding labels to be defined only by the 31 minutes they traverse.