Nathan Larson has consistently projected his identity as a singer and songwriter with unrestrained energy, avoiding the lo-fi shoegaze aesthetic that defined much of the 1990s. His association with Shudder to Think, a group shaped by post-punk, R&B, and glam rock, began in 1992 and allowed him to introduce emotionally expansive passages alongside lust-drenched vocal phrasing. On Pony Express Record he supplied electric blues-influenced guitar lines while co-writing several of the album’s strongest songs. On the denser 50,000 B.C. he wrote parts for five tracks and supplied backup vocals beneath Craig Wedren’s more forceful delivery.
In 1998 the largely instrumental High Art soundtrack gave Larson room to explore broader arranging techniques, replacing the band’s earlier angular textures with subdued ambient pieces; he also composed and performed the score’s single vocal track. Another soundtrack, First Love, Last Rites, features vocal appearances by the late Jeff Buckley together with Nina Persson, Liz Phair, and Billy Corgan and contains some of Larson’s most accomplished songwriting to that point. He exited Shudder to Think in 1999; the band disbanded soon afterward.
His first solo assignment was scoring the Academy Award-winning film Boys Don’t Cry, an achievement that brought him to Hollywood’s Blue Focus Management and led to further film work with Joel Schumacher on Tigerland and Phonebooth, Morgan Freeman on Desert Blue, Jesse Peretz on Le Chateau, and Todd Solondz on Storytelling. In 2001 Larson issued his first non-soundtrack solo album, Jealous God. Taking cues from the production aesthetic of Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley—known for their work with Elvis Costello, David Bowie, and Morrissey—and from the “organic balladry” of Al Green, he set aside the more aggressive traits of his former band. Produced by Langer and Winstanley, the record presents a series of soulful and inspired pieces.
