Marissa Nadler needed a break. On this chilly November evening, the road was beginning to wear on the young singer-songwriter. A recent car accident on the southern leg of her tour had left Nadler's nerves admittedly frayed. Waiting to take the stage at New York's Le Poisson Rouge, she needed to get away. Luckily Nadler had joined up with Alela Diane, a gifted folk singer from the northwest, on the tour and the two took a trip to a nearby West Village vintage shop to find Nadler a new dress. It was some much-needed "girl time," as Nadler put it.

Nadler has emerged in the last few years with a series of dense, haunting albums. Her rich, imagistic lyrics and her powerful voice, warbling between fragile and intense, have caused Nadler to often be lumped into the freak folk genre. As Pitchfork critic Grayson Currin recently noted, though, Nadler has moved "well beyond easy categories." Her songs are deeply personal affairs and she wraps her piercing voice with singular layers of plucked guitar. She creates songs that one won't soon forget.

The key to Nadler's artistry seems to be her embracement of adversity, anxiety, and sadness. While she obviously wished to put the trials of the tour behind her, one couldn't help but think that, while on stage that night, they fueled her music.