Droneflower (Marissa Nadler + Steve Brodsky)

Droneflower, the new collaboration between Marissa Nadler and Stephen Brodsky (Cave In), is a sprawling and expansive exercise in contrasts. It is the sound of the war between the brutal and the ethereal, the dark and the light, the past and the present, and the real and imagined.

Brodsky met Nadler for the first time in 2014 at Brooklyn’s Saint Vitus Bar when he came to see her play on her July tour, and they quickly became friends. One of the first ideas they discussed was a horror movie soundtrack, and while Droneflower isn’t that, it is a richly cinematic album. It’s easy to imagine much of the record set to images, though it wasn’t composed that way.

All the songs on Droneflower were recorded in home studios, and they throb with the frisson of that intimate environment. Nadler and Brodsky recorded two cover songs for the album — the epic Guns n’ Roses power ballad “Estranged” and Morphine’s beguiling “In Spite of Me.”

All ages.