Who
The Hollywood-born, now New York based singer-songwriter.

What
She’s known for her sparse, cobweb-fine vocals, and bruised, often world-weary lyrics. John Peel first drew her to a lot of people’s attention when he fell in love with her 2000 album Dogs and brought her in to play on his show six times.

Where
Her upcoming album, Outlaster was recorded in Steve Albini’s Electrical Audio studio in Chicago. Nastasia has worked with the prolific ‘studio engineer’ (Albini hates the word ‘producer’, among plenty other things) and member of Shellac on all her albums so far, and loves the way they gel together. ‘He’s good at telling me his opinion about what will work well, and I always like hanging out with him.’

Why
Nastasia’s new material sees her delicate, often uncomfortably heart-on-sleeve singing teamed up with a small orchestra this time, for a more lush sound, layered up with strings, horns and soaring melodies. Powerful stuff. But fans of the storytelling style on previous albums like Dogs, and On Leaving, will find more vignettes to savour, with songs about living alone, and a dangerous love triangle. ‘Singing lets me express myself,’ she says. ‘Maybe it’s because I’ve had a lot of time to think about it before. I sing about things I wouldn’t normally talk about, even to people I know well.’

Nina Nastasia plays Nice n Sleazy, Glasgow, Thu 27 May. Outlaster is released on Jun 7.