Nina Nesbitt - "Mountain Music"
There's no place like home
Scottish Singer-songwriter Nina Nesbitt has been actively producing music for just over a decade now — this year was the tenth anniversary of her debut album (and her 30th birthday). She seems to produce music mostly in the areas of Indie Folk and Pop, though her third album leaned over toward Electropop and Scandipop (according to the reviews cited on Wikipedia).
Mountain Music is her fourth album, and a bit of a sonic homecoming, with Nesbitt narrowing her sound down to acoustic Folk Pop. Despite the album’s title, the folk elements don’t really feel tied to any location or community.1 Several songs discuss her Scottish roots, but the instrumentation is largely generic — guitar, bass, drums, and the occasional keys. The exception to this is the regular inclusion of steel guitar, especially on the slower tracks.
This is likely because Nesbitt’s musical beginnings were strongly influenced by Taylor Swift. She started out learning guitar at 15, then recorded covers of songs from Swift’s Fearless for YouTube. With positive feedback, Nesbitt was encouraged to continue, and began writing and recording original material.
Fifteen years later, Nesbitt has won multiple awards and charted two singles in the UK Top 40.
I will confess that Mountain Music is not exactly what I thought I might get when I added the album to my list, but Nesbitt’s talent is obvious — and I am not remotely disappointed in anything here. Especially because Nesbitt’s approach to her music and the genric elements which comprise it is very different from what I’m accustomed to. There are subtle atmospheric and droning elements (including that aforementioned steel guitar) when I least expect them — sometimes they’re barely there, but still noticeable because of where they’ve been placed in the composition, like beams of light occasionally popping through tiny gaps in the canopy.
All told, Mountain Music really becomes its own beast. It doesn’t neatly slot into any typical genric classification — even “Folk Pop”, which is a very loose categorization, doesn’t adequately describe the blend of elements and styles and influences at play here. This is one of those albums in which every listen has yielded new realizations and discoveries; my estimation of what my final rating might be has gradually raised.
At large, the album is about the concepts of “home” and “not home”. In her interview with NPR, Nesbitt revealed that several songs were inspired or influenced by her travels in America; her interviews with Atwood Magazine and Songwriter Universe expand on this further. When she was just getting started, the music that inspired her to pursue songwriting was often American Folk, and during the period in which she wasn’t doing much writing for herself, she rediscovered that affinity, noting the similarities with Scottish and Irish Folk as she listened to music from Appalachia.
Several songs on the album deal directly with the concepts of travelling (“Pages”, “On the Run”), home (“I’m Coming Home”, “Big Things, Small Town”),2 providing security for others (“Mansion”), and finding home in somebody else (“Hard Times”). Mountain Music also deals heavily with insecurity and introversion, which play right into that greater theme of discovering where you feel safe, with songs like “What Will Make Me Great”, “Parachute”, and “Painkiller”.
The really nice thing about these themes and motifs is that, given that her last album was electropop of all things, Mountain Music seems to also be a musical homecoming. So as a unit, it really just works. While the thematic throughlines aren’t immediately noticeable, I didn’t have to prod it too hard to find them. Ultimately, the album does feel like a nice, neat little package.
This is a great album. I’ve been very happy with how it’s grown on me in a relatively short timespan.
Rating: Blue
I also have to add that the accent you expect to hear isn’t there. Her pronunciation is American. Not Scottish; not British.
“Big Things, Small Town” does get very close to “modern Country” territory, but it’s still a decent little jam.