“This new record is a bit of a bitch because it’s not particularly fun to perform,” Nina Nastasia said last year while promoting Riderless Horse, her first album since 2010. That’s the risk an artist takes when they frame a record around a traumatic event. The Hollywood-born alt-folk singer took a 12-year leave of absence due to “unhappiness [and] overwhelming chaos” that culminated in her longterm romantic and musical partner, Kennan Gudjonsson, taking his own life in 2020, the day after she ended their relationship. Riderless Horse, which forms the backbone of this show, condenses her grief into jagged bursts that are as hard to hear as they must be to play.
A fortifying glass of whisky is at her elbow – “I have a nervous tic, it calms me,” she laughs, perhaps to forestall judgment. But nobody is judging; she commands such reverence that a fan who begins to video the show quickly thinks better of it. It’s something like being at church; this is Nastasia’s first UK tour in a decade, and every moment is taken as a gift. Jokey asides add light to the shade – the one about John Peel’s family making her a Liverpool supporter is a peak American-abroad moment.
Accompanying herself on acoustic guitar, Nastasia enunciates every word precisely, ensuring that we understand that she and Gudjonsson were pushed beyond endurance. “You set a blaze inside our house/ Burned it down, smoked us out,” goes You Were So Mad, deceptively lilting in its rage. She’s strident on Nature, facing down Gudjonsson’s accusations – “I was always in the thick of his sorrow and blame / I could never save you” – and on The Two of Us her voice is drained of energy: “Trying to crawl out of this dung, the stink of it.”
Veteran songs such as Superstar and All Your Life still have emotional heft but the mettle-testing new material is what makes this a show to remember. The audience is overjoyed to have her back: her suggestion that we visit the merch table rouses worshipful cheers, and she replies, “Stop, or I will cry.”
• At EartH, London, 4 April; then touring the UK until 13 April.
