Nina Nastasia and Jim White
You Follow Me
(FatCat, 2007)

On paper the idea seems perfect: pair the fine indie songstress Nina Nastasia with ace Australian drummer Jim White. The New York-based woman seems to be at the height of her powers, coming off of last year’s criminally overlooked On Leaving, which deserved a place on “best of” lists it never got. Jim White, as a member of the instrumental Dirty Three, has backed up songwriters like Cat Power and Will Oldham to great effect, played on On Leaving and Nastasia’s 2003 record, Run to Ruin, and has never missed a proverbial beat. This, his first billing above the title, seems a pairing of sympathetic souls, combining a couple of musicians who know each other well, and it should have been stellar, an ass kicker, a no-brainer, a slam dunk. Even recordist, Steve Albini, who has worked with Nastasia before and is an admitted fan, called it a “cool-ass record.”

But the resulting You Follow Me is not quite as good as its billing. It’s a wonder, after the quality of On Leaving, if Nastasia could come up with 10 more top-shelf songs in so little time, or if she’d succumb to the temptation to trot out some of her junior varsity material and save her best stuff for her next solo record. But that’s not the problem. The songs are there, typical Nastasia greatness. Too often, though, White’s polyrhythm gets in the way of them. Perhaps if his wash of brushes and tribal thumping were just quieter in the mix? Maybe a tad less busy? On songs like the delicate “Our Discussion”, a heartbreaking ballad with quiet acoustic picking, or “Odd Said the Doe”, the guitar part is often lost behind splashing cymbals and pitter-patter patterns. This phenomenon happens far too often.

Nastasia’s songs are typically simple and direct acoustic-based numbers with a powerful dynamism, often filled with dramatic tension and anxiety. Her voice can communicate her thoughts about relationships and family just as well when she whispers as when she rips out a howl. These traits would seemingly lend themselves to a duo-with-drummer setup, and there are some tracks, like “I Come After You” or “The Day I Would Bury You” or especially “In the Evening”, where she both sings louder and strums more insistently, slashing at her guitar, that fare better.

All this isn’t to say that the record is bad. Nastasia, at her worst is so much better than most of her peers at their best—she always has hooks, she always has something to say, she always makes you feel. In the scheme of things, You Follow Me is a compelling listen—it just could have been much more so.

Was it Moe Tucker who said that it was the drummer’s job to lay down the backbeat and stay out of the way? In the case of You Follow Me, you kind of wish that were the case, that Nastasia would lead and White would come along behind and keep out of trouble. But the record does give equal billing. Perhaps it should have been Nina Nastasia with Jim White.

Listen: “Odd Said the Doe“  [at myspace.com]