“I will fly around the world just to forget you” are the opening words of “It Hits Harder,” the first track on New Radiations. The song is about a farewell. The album ends with “Sad Satellite,” where the titular heavenly object is used as a metaphor for distance, when the gap is increasing between the narrator and the subject: the latter a character who is “sucking me dry” and “took me for ride”.
It’s not hard, then, to construe the tenth album from the Nashville-based Marissa Nadler as one permeated with partings – cleavages which create distance. If analysed, detachment can bring perspective and understanding. But Nadler’s lyrics instead seem to be a form of reportage, oblique vignettes setting-up New Radiations as a commentary on disconnection.