In this day and age technology has afforded musicians new liberties in their music. Virtually any sound can be created with just a computer and a keyboard (sometimes not even that is necessary). The result sometimes feels like a child wielding his father’s gun, as most musicians fall into the category of those who spend more time thinking of “different” ideas for their record and not enough time thinking about songwriting. 

It's in this backdrop that musicians like Quintin Nadig stand out like a cool drink of water in the desert of over production. In his debut record, Anchor Details, Quintin Nadig offers a minimalist, honest effort of ten songs (and one reprise) that fly in the face of technology’s monopoly on music. Quintin’s record is reminiscent of a number of great musicians, including Nick Drake, Red House Painters (a la “Songs for a Blue Guitar”), and Robert Deeble, however Quintin’s sound is something all to his own. Quintin’s vocal offerings are vague and obscure, but in that way they seem honest and accessible. Even when you don’t know what story he’s telling with the songs you feel the emotion in his near monotone voice. His lazy voice hints at a vast expanse of passion in each song. 

Accompanying this vocal offering is his unobtrusive guitar which he strums lazily, the moody, yet expressive cello, and his piano, which in some songs sounds like a broken music box, creating an aura of innocence and beauty. In a fitting intro track Quintin opens his record with the reflective “Stiletto Heels and a Bullet Proof Vest”, a melancholy track with a recording of a rainy day in the background. In my mind the most opportune time to experience this record would be a rainy day, maybe in your car, stuck in traffic after a long day of work. 

The rest of the record is just as expressive with the slight fuzz that a four track recorder will leave heralding the beginning of each new track and signaling the end of the previous. One gets the feeling that Quintin recorded these songs in his room after a night of inspiration. It almost feels like you’re in the room with him as he pours out his life in his songs in an honest way, without whining or hubris. 

There were times when some of the lyrics did seem a little forced and some songs I liked less than some of the others, but all in all this record is a triumph. It is infectious in its non-forced elegance and integrity. This record is highly recommended for anyone who is looking for an expressive, thoughtful record that is perfect to listen to on winter twilights.
-holiday  southofmainstream.com
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(NOTE: translated from French)
Quintin Nadig enters by the loudspeakers, crosses the part on the point of the feet and moves away through the window until disappearing in the blur.  This disc is a pure wonder of saving of means, suggestion, of intimacy, unvoiced comments to express oneself.  First album of a young person songwriter of Charleston in South Carolina, which grew in Illinois rural and lived a few times in Alaska.  Details' has the taste of great empty spaces, of the maritime coasts to finish moreover it, of these walks as a recluse where anybody will not be crossed.  It the taste of the salted rain, or is this has already or the residue of hardly dried tears?  Most of the time only with its guitar and some sound effects, Quintin which whispers more than it does not sing, and it is so much is accompanied better, also from one title to another by one or two musicians invited to the piano, banjo, accordion or violoncello, always from a humble point of view and reserve.  Details' does not impose anything, leaves all to the state impressions, one will be however liked to put in perspective it in the line of others songwriters or groups like Hayden (time?Moving Careful '), Kepler, P:ano or Bedhead.  To only handle the hard-bound small pocket, to admire the artwork of it, it is known already that one almost will venerate this disc.  A writing all in mysteries and demanding also, which appears fully only when one stops to do nothing but listen to it, all opened ears, the heart with the free air, ready to capsize under the drops of rain.  Difficult to imagine better conditions than one Saturday dark and rainy afternoon of November first to let itself go to the description of emotional textures of?Anchor Details '.  heels and has bulletproof vest' opens on a noise of rain and by a space-time short cut.  Impossible not to remember sublime a?Moving Careful' ep of Hayden which bathed in same water.  Some sounds of piano, remote noise of a car under the rain of time to other, the held guitar and detached song of Quintin.  The piece is not due to large thing, like a fog suspended in the air, but is due nevertheless what is more remarkable thanks to this impressionist writing, on the whole impressive.  One may find it beneficial even to listen to?Anchor Details' with the helmet, while walking under the rain, assured imposing result.  which follows is a bomb, announced and confirmed.  A "one, two three, furnace", followed by an acoustic guitar which flies away as at Red House Painters, of a violoncello worthy of Carissa' S Wierd and of an air song intimate that one believed private property of Chuzzlewit.  It is beautiful, terribly beautiful to weaken about it for eternity.    are the apologist, I' m the one with the matching shirt, sing the song in stereo, the one that station-wagons my heart for has while??.  A little tourneboulé, one lights of a candle the time of?st. mawr '.  The storm damaged the electric posts by reversing a tree, just a guitar, a voice and an alchemy which disturbs.  ocean is not forgiving like your smile, my soul is hungry fro the freedom, my thoughts are the silver tides searching for shores to disappear into '.  One finishes the hearing of?life boat # 3' shivering.  An anglophone chronicler compared the banjo on?nocturne' with the noises which make of large water drops at the time of a downpour when they fall on a metal roof.  A song as to shelter one night of summer under a hangar while it rains outside, to shelter, put on again a sweater, to wait until that occurs and to try to disentangle its melancholy.  Banjo, violoncello and guitar on?like when we were courting ', probably the most diurnal and opened out beach, even if instead of the blur and the shade, one faces only one estival dazzling with the similar result.  To sit down in full sun close to a fountain, Quintin Nadig shares here certain its more beautiful moments, comparable with those captured one day by its distances cousins of Ida And the words are terrible:  settled down tired eyes closed labored hands falling like winter into spring edge you hear me I coils you antemeridian slowly unfolding stars and to their wishes hide the sunlight lamp chase me again through grant park around the fountain and into your arms I edge feel you along the Mississippi the to rivet bends and flow one you?'.  There is then something of darker and painful in?ketchikan ', of the ruminated feelings and a feeling of dead end.  But soon one takes again the way of the airs with?safe harbour ', the made-to-order of a night butterfly.  A small ballade in Red House Painters?let' S never roofing stone it' to cry a little:  won' T forget weightless summers and meteor showers '.  Banjo and piano for a melody deadened in Bedhead on?belay my last '.  It is time then to be left after an instrumental resumption of?lifeboat # 3' where the accordion is let go in tablecloths which one would say almost drones and where the guitar repeats the same notes hypnotiquement ad infinitum.  Quintin Nadig one of immense is discovered of 2003, a first as discrete album and shy person as convincing.  One is already certain that in the future one will still divide way with him.  Didier  © 2003 matamore
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This is a very beautiful album of folk songs from a true original. I wish the album was a tad bit longer, but that’s of course better than wishing it was shorter. Quintin Nadig does a wonderful job of painting pictures in one’s mind. Great first album.
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Abysses QUINTIN NADIG Anchor Details Buy this disc!  A little lost, Quintin Nadig decides into 1999 to break form his studies and join the coast guard.  He is sent to Alaska during one year.  With his return in Illinois, the songwriter which something in him appears and awakes, and it composes "Anchor Details", the best debut album of this year, a collection of folk twisted and melancholic person, gleams and dreams uninhabited.  There one holds an ideal disc for the rainy days, these days when one choses not to leave, where one looks at people outside, soaked, where one shelters under a shelter drunk and paying attention not to be splashed.  The title d?ouverture, "Stiletto heels and has bulletproof vest", with these noises of drops which fall, wounds d?entrée:  some notes of piano, some notes of guitars, all been useful slowly and flown over by a touching voice of brittleness (near to that of Phil Evrum of the Microphones, even that of Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes where even of Nick Drake), filled d?une extreme emotion, almost in spite of it.  L?attention of l?auditor n?est not only retained, it is from now on captive of this turbid water, of these unperceivable but poignant musical movements with wish.  "Anchor Details", through these eleven ballades of folk slowcore and minimal, offers an unexpected possibility of meditation.  The diving in this album is inevitably abyssal.  In apnea, "St Mawr" and "nocturne:  breath ", in any discretion and simplicity, evokes nights of pleasant loneliness.  One morfond not here, even if "Ketchikan", lugubrious and shivering, n?est not without leaving the blue ones to l?âme.  The violoncello and the banjo, the guitar and accordion, all are distilled carefully, strike just, and emphasize a voice which appears, once the finished, unforgettable disc.  The packaging is looked after, just like the words employed by Quintin Nadig to deplore its failures, to drive out its demons, to let themselves hope.  C?est without voice quintin leaves us on final and instrumental "lifeboat # 3 (reprise)", three minutes of loss and d?oubli, three minutes when accordion and the guitar leaves us in an unquestionable abandonment.  A beach, one night:  one distinguishes hardly the waves, one hears them especially, one feels the sea, one feels a raised fresh wind, one is cold.  One dreams.
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