The mirror behind the Mohawk’s inside stage produces an oddly unsettling effect. The frosted glass reflects another world, one paralleling its own wood and brick reality. The audience stares dumbed upon themselves, and the performer is left naked and open in the hindsight. Seated before the full room with only her acoustic guitar Wednesday night, it seemed an appropriate environment for Nina Nastasia.
The New Yorker’s songs have always exposed an unnerving intimacy, her powerful voice confidently pitching high and whispering soft in a confessional paradoxically strengthened in her own insecurities. Yet there was also an easy reciprocation from the crowd, who seemed largely her friends, in the discarding of hard stances, the following of her intimations through the looking glass.
The acoustic set recalled the sparseness of her early albums, though the setlist culled mostly from the last two: 2006’s On Leaving and last year’s collaboration with Jim White, You Follow Me. Her playing was immaculate, and sans arrangements or drums, her voice was given even further foregrounding. “I Write Down Lists” and “The Day I Would Bury You” were stark and defiant, a slow drawl crystallizing in ringing tones, while “Odd Said the Doe” and “Dumb I Am” were lightly lilting.
The gentle distraction of “Jim’s Room” and “Our Day Trip” balanced the soaring reach of “Brad Haunts a Party” and “In the Evening,” but the high hovering trill of the rolling “Counting Up Your Bones” and the absolutely haunting hush of “There Is No Train” stood out. “That’s All There Is,” from 2002’s The Blackened Air, proved an appropriate closer as Nastasia’s swelling voice settled against the emptying room.
As emotionally strafing as Nastasia’s solo set was, the between song banter with the crowd established an unmasked intimacy. As she tuned her guitar, she digressed through stories of being stuck in Austin with her band following her first South by Southwest appearance and an hilariously embarrassing experience of recently attempting to take a dance class. She called on friends to tell jokes, and they bantered back.
And amid that awkwardness, the space between Nastasia and the audience seemed to fall away, flattened and reflected into a single shared layer.
This article appears in February 8 • 2008.
