ALBUM REVIEW: Nina Nastasia – Riderless Horse

Temporary Residence

Released: 22.07.22

Riderless Horse emerges from a period of personal trauma for Nina Nastasia that’s too complex and too awful to revisit here, but that this album – her first in over a decade – would even happen was no certainty. Recorded with long-time collaborator Steve Albini, this is a record full of pain, of course, but also of redemption and rebirth.

It’s defiantly not misery porn and it sounds wonderful (as ever, Albini’s recording is simple and unadorned). Nastasia’s yearning voice and gently accomplished guitar sound as lovely as ever and while many of the songs are full of grief and loss (“She said you were with me, but oh how can that be?”) there’s healing here too (“I want to live, I am ready to live”). I’m rooting for her.