Stream Nina Ryser’s Fantastic, Adventurous New Album Water Giants

Nina Ryser — of Palberta, @, and Nina Ryser fame — has a new solo album out today, and it may be the most fascinating record you hear this week. Water Giants finds the Philly musician venturing all over the map, from heady electronic instrumentals to scrappy indie-pop tunes, injecting it all with a common sensibility. With songs like the surging electro-pop track “Cuz You,” the strings-and-piano ditty “You Are What You Eat,” and the wobbly synth excursion “Piggy Boys” crammed together into the same tracklist, it makes perfect sense with the junkyard twee of “Beauty In Grime” levels off into a droning ambient sketch.

Water Giants is dotted with such satisfying twists and turns. Ryser bills it as her first solo album not recorded alone at home, creating in the studio with engineer Lucas Knapp instead. The album still has some homespun qualities to it, but the DIY legacy Ryser brings to the music meshes with the more professional aspects of the sound in rewarding ways. It reminds me of a more playful iteration of the Microphones or a lower-fi Magnetic Fields at times, and my colleague Tom Breihan has already pointed out the resemblance to the Blow.

Fans of Ryser’s own robust discography — including advance singles “Things I Claim” and “Underestimate” — will of course find much to love here as well. Stream the album below.

Water Giants is out now on Dear Life.