WOMAD

Heather Nova

From Bermuda

"The word has connotations of something visceral and sexual in a subtle way," says Heather Nova explaining the title of Oyster, her eagerly-awaited debut album on Big Cat/WORK, "...something quite raw." Oyster is already one of Europe's best-selling indie albums of the year, having sold more than 200,000 copies based largely on Heather's - and her band's hard earned reputation as a powerful on-stage presence in the European club-scene. In fact, Heather and her four-piece band had played over 50 gigs in the first half of 1995.Throughout Oyster, whether the songs are dressed in the seductive flashy come-on of "Walk This World" or careening through the eerie subconscious rituals of "Throwing Fire At The Sun," the listener is pulled into a psychological and emotional collusion with the singer.Sometimes harrowing, sometimes comforting, often stretching the confines of pop and rock music, Heather Nova is the kind of artist that can make a fan feel like a confidant. "The songwriting process ir pretty pure, she confesses, "very personal, very private. I don't think I could write with someone else. Songwriting, for me, is about communicating all that stuff you're never able to communicate. In day-to-day life, there's nowhere that you're really real about your emotions. So, for me, music is a place for that."Spurred on by the results of her first songs, Heather made a brief foray to New York before moving to London, where she got into the groove of live performing singing in pubs and cafes by night. At one of these gigs, Heather met Abbo of Big Cat Records (whose European roster includes releases by Pavement, Carter [USM], Luscious Jackson, Jeff Buckley, and others)."I'd met Heather and, without hearing any of her music, advised her to stay clear of all managers and A&R men," Abbo recalls. "It took only a couple of minutes of seeing her live before I was ready to eat my hat and went about convincing her that she needed both a manager and a record of her own. I offered her our services. The result of that initial meeting was the now highly-collectible These Walls E.P.(The Frith EP), which via it's bare-bones instrumentation, immediately drew attension to Heather's vocal prowess. As she set out touring the U.K. as a support act for Bob Mould, and then the Violent Femmes, it became clear that the full expression of her musical vision required the sonic palette of a whole band. Recording a new batch of home-demos, Heather set out with two clear goals: 1) to recruit a band of sympathetic musicians and 2) find a producer to help translate what she could hear in her head onto tape. "I had the same dilemmas that I'm sure a million songwriters have experienced before me," Heather admits. "I was frustrated in that I felt I couldn't realize the vision I had for my songs with just a guitar and voice, and then, I'd already learnt that the simpler studio sounds require the greatest experience." Once she'd assembled her band, things hegan to click with incredible speed. A DAT, recorded from rhe mixing deck at the band's gig (their eighth) at London's Mean Fiddler, provided an unexpected breakthrough. That live recording -- released on Big Cat in Europe and entitled BLOW--sequed into a series of live shows that established Heather Nova as one of the most dynamic performers on the European live club circuit. As dates on her club tour went consistently SRO, 'Blow's' sales topped 40,000 and the record entered the CMJ Top 10 import chart. The group has since played gigs with artists including Madder Rose, Robyn Hitchcock, Bob Mould, and Pavement, but more importantly, have done their fair share of headlining, especially on the tour which produced LIVE FROM THE MILKY WAY, a live extended play (EP) released on Big Cat/Columbia in April 1995.In between tours, Heather and her band cut some tracks with Youth (Killing Joke, U2, Faith No More), who'd already put out a group of her home demo recordings as the stop-gap pre-BLOW release GLOW STARS (on Butterfly). When it came time to record the bulk of OYSTER, Heather turned to Felix Tod (her longtime sound engineer and man-behind-the-dials for her MILKY WAY album). She's also working with her longtime bandmates, including guitarist David Ayers ("...he can play jazz, classical, anything at the drop of the hat!..." and cellist Nadia Lanman. "The whole thing I want the band to be doing," she points out by way of ensemble philosophy,"is to be another element expressing the emotion in the song. The cello is a good instrument for that..especially mixed up with an electric guitar; it's this great kind of marriage."Since the European release of OYSTER, Heather Nova has maintained her commitment to live performance. Over the course of summer 1995, she's been the support act for Neil Young with Pearl Jam and shared bills with Pavement and the Cranberries.Heather Nova's remarkable union of musical and emotional elements has found a battery of enthusiaists on both sides of the Atlantic. "Not only a remarkable voice, capable of leaping tall octaves in a single bound, but also some very strong songs, "wrote Alternative Press while the NME called Heather "the perfect antidote to rock's increasingly dreary lack of invention... the proud possessor of a truly incredible voice, insuring her simple, fragile songs drip with emotion." CMJ found in Heather Nova"...an intelligent, heart-stroking talent that deserves the same kind of attention and exposure as her influences." These influences include musicians like Patti Smith, the Beatles, and Neil Young as well as writers like Michael Ondaatje, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Anne Sexton and Pablo Neruda.