The fourth album by Boston-based singer-songwriter Marissa Nadler is a bit of a retrenchment following 2007's SONGS III: BIRD ON THE WATER.
That album, featuring production by Greg Weeks and the musical accompaniment of his Espers bandmates, pushed Nadler closer to the "freak folk" contingent than is her natural metier; the sparser, quieter LITTLE HELLS is not a return to the acoustic starkness of her first two albums so much as a more natural continuation and expansion of that sound.
A uniformly dark-hued album that escapes bleakness through the tender beauty of Nadler's voice, LITTLE HELLS is the singer's most fully realized work so far.