Nina Ryser - Paths Of Color

Nina Ryser has been making music since she was eight years old. Her first gear was her Fischer-Price toy tape machine, on which she’d record songs written on piano, karaoke songs, and thoughts from “Nina’s Diry.” One of these, 'I Just Really Hope You Have a Good Time Listening,' is the final track on Ryser’s new solo album, Paths of Color.

Paths is Ryser’s sixth solo album - an impressive number, considering she’s also spent the past seven years in the buzzing art-noise-rock trio Palberta (as well as the projects Old Maybe, Shimmer, Data, and Fire Roast). In line with her past few releases, Paths is characteristic Nina Ryser: dreamy, wonky, synth-based art-pop that’s bubbly, edgy, sweet, and dark all at once; with elements of post-punk, art rock, and free jazz.

Recorded at her home in Philadelphia during the Covid-19 stay-at-home order in the spring of 2020, on Paths, Ryser has honed her home recording and mixing skills and refined her home studio set-up, but she’s maintained that homemade vibe, as well as the freedom of childhood expression that is so crucial to her sound. Her background in contemporary classical music serves to hold it all together in a taut, designful balance.

As fun and playful-sounding as it is, Paths of Color, created during the pandemic, is also an album of loss and grief. Underlying each song is a love song about “loved ones I've lost this past year, and loved ones in my life today who I admire and cherish.” 'You've Always Taken Charge' is about her grandmother's death, and 'Dancing in the Street,' whose chorus is an email Ryser once received from her grandmother, it is both mourning and celebration. But, as Ryser says, “There's celebration in mourning, too.”

To quote eight-year-old Ryser: “I just really hope that you had a great time listening and I really hope that you listen to it over and over, until you’re tired of it, and you tell me how good it is the next time we see each other. I am very proud of my work, and I hope you are, too. So, seeya later. The end!” 

TRACKLIST: 

1. Breathe Again

2. Dancing in the Street 

3. Know Me Like You Do 

4. Premonition 1 

5. Shelf the Trophy 

6. Grass 

7. Close My Eyes 

8. Billy Boy 

9. Premonition 2 

10. You’ve Always Taken Charge 

11. Playground From Memory 

12. I Just Really Hope You Have a Great Time Listening 

• US import 

see also: 
Lily Konigsberg - Lily We Need To Talk Now   LP | CD 

view all new releases...