When: 7.30pm on Wednesday 9 May
Where: The Phoenix, 1 Precinct Centre, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9RN

Often compared to Josephine Foster and Neko Case, Marissa Nadler hails from Massachusetts, where perhaps the brutal winters bred into her a chilly disposition and an early propensity for the darker and more melancholy side.

Marissa’s music is very dreamy and atmospheric: an amalgam of traditional folk, paisley underground, shoe gaze, and dream pop. Think Mazzy Star but more melancholy, her songs are full of sadness, broken hearts and death. Her voice captures the imagination, cold and spectral yet beautiful. She plays many stringed instruments and is often noted as an excellent, often experimental, guitar player. “She sings songs of the sea, the haunting chansons of maidens, the cowboy ditties of ranchers, and the funerary processions of mourners”. Marissa Nadler has just released her third album, Songs III: Bird on the Water, which is earning rave reviews is the press.

Thomas Denver Jonsson will be in town to bring you tracks from his introspective third LP “The Lake Acts Like an Ocean” which will be released during 2007. Damien Jurado and Ned Oldham. With his new songs earning comparisons with contemporaries – such as South San Gabriel, My Morning Jacket, M Ward, Damien Jurado and Cat Power – Jonsson appears to have distanced himself from the classical songsmiths (Dylan, Young, Springsteen) he’s been most often compared to before. This must surely be Jonsson’s year as he reaches out to the wider audience he so obviously deserves.

Ivan Campo are influenced by artists such as Devendra Banhart, Nick Harper and The Arcade Fire. They supported Shack on their last live appearances. The effect is a unique style infused with echoes of films, snatched memories and a healthy sense of the absurd. “A unique and mildly unsettling sound, like David Lynch circa Blue Velvet. Can’t recommend them enough!”

This is a co-promotion with Candy Mountain and Pineapple Folk.

Tickets £6 from WeGotTickets.com