Michael Nau

Michael Nau writes songs that sound as if they were recorded on a late afternoon in some other decade: tape hiss, soft reverb, and melodies that take their time arriving. Before recording under his own name in 2016, the Cumberland, Maryland songwriter led Page France and then Cotton Jones, two bands from the hushed, homespun end of mid-2000s indie folk. His solo work has moved from the full-band warmth of Michael Nau & The Mighty Thread, cut live across the rooms of a Vermont apartment, to the soul and reggae of Less Ready to Go and the pedal steel and strings of 2023's Accompany, which earned an 84 on Metacritic. Lately the work has turned inward again. Tangle's Way began on a four-track cassette at home and was built around a friend's prototype instrument modeled on the Ondes Martenot.