Marissa Nadler – If I Could Breathe Underwater (Bella Union)

Marissa Nadler – If I Could Breathe Underwater (Bella Union)

Ahead of her ninth studio album Marissa Nadler shares new single If I Could Breathe Underwater, lush instrumentation and experimental harp by Mary Lattimore swimming through the space of the song, released on Bella Union and Sacred Bones. 

Marissa NadlerArtist: Marissa Nadler
Track: If I Could Breathe Underwater
Label: Bella Union
Released: 14 September 2021
Find it: Spotify

From the off there is an otherworldly quality to If I Could Breathe Underwater from Marissa Nadler. At once lush with instrumentation and blessed with the space to luxuriate in its softness it’s the second single to be shared from forthcoming ninth studio album The Path Of The Clouds and shows the artist at her very best.

Nadler said of the track, “When I wrote If I Could Breathe Underwater, I was contemplating the possibilities of possessing various superhuman powers: teleportation, shapeshifting, energy projection, aquatic breathing, extrasensory perception, and time travel to name a few. As a lyrical device, I married those powers with events in my life, wondering if and how they could change the past or predict the future.

“Musically, the song grew into a lush, cinematic composition with a pulsing rhythm and serpentine bass hooks. I loved working on the melody for this song and bringing the choruses to their climaxes. I asked my longtime friend, the excellent Mary Lattimore, to play harp on it and her layered, hallucinatory shimmers really echo the netherworld of the story.”

She went on to say of the video, “The video, beautifully directed and edited by Jenni Hensler, serves to create a preternatural world where I change the colours of the sky and the water, float weightlessly through seas, and become one with layers of colour and ink. Photographer Nick Fancher did the cinematography along with Jenni and they came together to create a world that fuses with the song seamlessly.”

If I Could Breathe Underwater by Marissa Nadler if out digitally now via Bella Union / Sacred Bones Records. Album The Path Of The Clouds follows on 29 October 2021.

Find Marissa Nadler: Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | Spotify | Bandcamp

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Sarah Lay

Sarah Lay is editor of Popoptica.
A long-standing music journalist she's also co-founder of independent record label Reckless Yes, an author of novels, and when not messing around with words and music, a digital strategist.
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