Marissa Nadler: "Diamond Heart"

Marissa Nadler has a timeless voice, or at least one that stretches back forty-some years. High praise, to be sure, but as she warbles and wanders through “Diamond Heart,” only icons of the American folk tradition present themselves: Judy Collins, Joan Baez, the legends. When she sings of looking “for you in the diamond trees / In the highway divine / Deliver me,” it’s hard not to wonder which Dylan song she’s covering, but unlike her ‘60s forbears, Nadler the songwriter is only the interpreter of her own heart. Much of the upcoming Songs III: Bird on the Water is shrouded in grey gloom and strange freak-folk fog thanks to the production of Espers’ Greg Weeks; “Diamond Heart” is naked and luminous, an angel in that mist.