Path of the Clouds

After releasing her first album in 2004, Marissa Nadler gradually expanded upon the haunting acoustic approach of her early Gothic dream folk works toward something more complex and intangible across the next 15 years and seven official solo albums (not counting her numerous self-released covers, demos, and short-form collections). With her ninth album, The Path of the Clouds, she finally tips the balance from indie folk to rock on a cinematic set largely inspired by watching reruns of Unsolved Mysteries during pandemic lockdown in 2020. What Nadler does with those inspirations is uniquely hers. While its stage-setting predecessor, 2019's For My Crimes, included collaborations with the likes of Sharon Van Etten, Angel Olsen, and harpist Mary Lattimore, The Path of the Clouds' more-often-than-not wired, distortion-enriched palette is foreshadowed by the names of contributors like Simon Raymonde (Cocteau Twins, Lost Horizons), Jesse Chandler (Mercury Rev, Midlake), Amber Webber (Black Mo