Breaking a silence of twelve years, Nina Nastasia is back to music and records, not to celebrate a stable, happy life, but to claim it back, and save it from its saddest, most painful moment. After twenty-five years, Nastasia ended a tumultuous, toxic relationship with Kennan Gudjonsson, her artistic and romantic partner. The following day Gudjonsson died by suicide. Burdened with unimaginable guilty, Nastasia escaped into music, where she found light and a way out. Produced alongside Steve Albini, Riderless Horse is a stripped-down, skin-prickling set of songs that retell Nastasia and Gudjonsson’s relationship, now at its darkest, now at its most hopeful. Ending with the words ‘I wanna live, I’m ready to live’, Riderless Horse leaves a heart-warming sense of hope. We say art saves, but few times has the saying been more palpable or profoundly moving.