Jolie Laide – Creatures
Jolie Laide, a collaboration between acclaimed American songwriter Nina Nastasia and members of Calgary’s Florida BC, has just recorded their sophomore album Creatures, on the heels of their 2023 self-titled debut.
The path to here arose from a chance encounter two decades ago at legendary producer Steve Albini’s studio. Jeff MacLeod and Clinton St. John were recording an album as members of Calgary, Canada’s critically-acclaimed The Cape May. Nina Nastasia was next in line for the studio. A night of commiserating led to a life-long friendship and mutual respect, and at Albini’s suggestion, The Cape May became Nastasia’s touring band on a North American and then European tour. Nastasia cut her teeth and captured attention in the late ’90s indie scene. Seven Steve Albini-produced albums, six John Peel sessions and many accolades later, Nastasia landed back in the studio and onstage after an absence in the 2010s. She occupies a unique space with indelible shadowy folk and Americana where tradition flirts with avant-garde, built around sparse, stark confessionals, ambitious arrangements and unique collaborations. The self-titled debut album’s songs emerged from home recordings exchanged between Calgary and New York City mid-pandemic with MacLeod providing the song’s bones and Nastasia contributing vocals and melodies. That album’s songs felt rooted in place, evoking classic California ballads, desert dirges and a cinematic sound that could’ve been pulled from the score of a Leone or Lynch film. The line between fiction and the deeply personal was often blurred.
Jolie Laide is now a full ensemble; a culmination of its members’ deep, decades-long recording and touring histories. Nastasia and MacLeod are joined by lauded indie folk/rock singer-songwriter Clinton St. John (three solo albums plus The Cape May, Pale Air Singers) and Morgan Greenwood (Baths, Azeda Booth). Engineer/producer Colin Stewart was essentially the fifth band member, enhancing their sound with his keen ears and mad skills. Nastasia and St. John’s powerful narratives, duets and harmonies soar over Greenwood and MacLeod’s layered multi-instrumental wizardry for a nuanced, moody psychedelic sound. Intensely beautiful, enticing and innovative, the music envelops you as flawed characters reveal darkness and tragedy that exist in the shadows. A line from the song “Something for the Thrill” encapsulates the music: ‘falling leaf, sitting on the borderline, hits you like a symphony.’
Early praise for Jolie Laide and “Pacific Coast Highway” (debut album single):
“Jolie Laide is the new collaborative duo of Nina Nastasia and Jeff MacLeod, and after Nastasiaunveiled Riderless Horse, her first album in 12 years, last year, ‘Pacific Coast Highway’ suggests that we’ll be getting more moving songwriting from the beloved cult figure soon enough. It possesses a stormy foundation, with a cracked guitar-and-drums arrangement that threatens to explode, although Nastasia also communicates a calmness while extolling the peace and freedom of her subject.”
— Billboard (10 Cool New Pop Songs)
“{“Pacific Coast Highway” is} a startling introduction to Nina Nastasia and Canadian musician Jeff MacLeod’s new collab: Nastasia hymns her reckless California youth as sweetly chiming guitar gives way to storms.”
— The Guardian
‘It’s a kind of travelogue that traces the line between freedom and empty aimlessness: a child’s oceanside liberty that becomes an adult’s existential terror…..MacLeod digs into the repertoire of American popular song to represent West Coast musical history and dredges up sludgier tones for Nastasia’s desert dirges. His guitar adds a sense of sweetened dread to Nastasia’s emotional realism, an inventive expression of her internal world.”
— Pitchfork album review
“{“Pacific Coast Highway” is} languorously-dreamt, noir-edged.”
— The Autumn Roses