Oyster

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(5 stars) - listen and feel
She sings with passion, her melodies and lyrics paint beautiful and dark and mellow and cruel and endless images and fairytales, as if she sings for MY life and MY stories... but she doesn't. Everyone will find themselves and their own private "island" in these songs. Heather Nova is a great artist and this is possibly her best album so far. Come, "walk this world" with her...

(5 stars) - she's just wonderful
I can't say enough good things about Heather Nova. What can I say besides she's great?

a lot of musicians are either good writers or they are good musically, but not both. Heather Nova is both.

and she's just so good too. melodically I would say she is as good as Paul McCartney. her songs have 'hooks' and they are memorable.

so where is her fame? well I think she is a person who grew up traveling and goes her own way, in a lot of ways.

and

I like walk this world.

and I like - walking higher and - I like all of them.

Island is really good, and haunting. about domestic violence.

but I can't really capture her appeal in words. with a more famous musician, I don't worry about that b/c I assume people are somewhat familiar with the music. with heather nova, a reader might not be.

but she's just wonderful, in my NOT so humble opinion.

iTunes has musical samples. her music has a haunting quality and that is appropriate b/c evidently Nova lost a loved one early in life. her song 'walking higher' is about trying to go on after a loved one has gone. and the ruthless questioning that results. could I be walking higher? if I tried harder, if I was better, I was was more...(more what, I don't know) but.

I have had issues with severe unresolved grief and 'complicated mourning' and that is a really good song.

and then there is 'throwing fire at the sun.' I have to admit I am not exactly sure what that is about :), but I like it. maybe it is about adding one's own personal share of heat and light to what is already there, and the futility of that? even though we can be quite destructive to each other. I don't know but.

Nova grew up on a boat and her songs reference the sea and stars quite often. she tends to be very concrete in her descriptions; that is, vivid. but she tackles relationships as well.

she is also not afraid to show both intelligence and passion. she reminds me of Natalie Merchant in some ways, although more obscure.

she has a great sense of rhythm and I like the frequent astronomical references. Nova is a stage name chosen in part b/c she loves the stars and grew up navigating by them.

she said that Island has lyrics that she is very proud of. and I think Island is a really good song, about domestic violence. it is haunting and clear but it has an odd kind of beauty as well. which to me there is beauty when people survive terrible conditions. this is a situation I personally went through as a teenager.

It is a great CD.

(4 stars) - Poetic Rock
Oyster opens with the brooding mid tempo rock number Walk This World, Heal is a tender ballad with lovely acoustic guitar whilst Island is a long passionate rock song with great vocals and evocative imagery. Love ballads like Light Years, Verona and Maybe An Angel are found alongside surges of aggressive rock. Sugar has plenty of tempo variation, starting out slow and atmospheric like a spoken poem, then developing into a full-blown rock number. I like the solemn drums and interesting arrangement of Throwing Fire At The Sun. A highlight of Oyster is the melodic pop song Truth And Bone with its poetic lyrics and hypnotic chorus. The poignant and tuneful Doubled Up In Love that concludes the album is my favorite. Nova seems to prefer complex arrangements where tender balladeering alternates with uptempo, powerful rock sections in many of her songs. Her music reminds me of both Sheryl Crow and Alanis Morissette. The style is an appealing blend of rock and pop and the album contains some exceptional songs.

(5 stars) - Her songs hook up with my brain
For me, a song that works is like finding a bicycle that is the right size for your chimp. Not everyone has ever trained a chimpanzee to ride a bicycle or picked up the words and chords to a song and found that the words suggest a melody so strongly that there is something internal that is felt exactly at the point on the paper where a chord coincides with one of the words. This is not likely to happen until the brain actually knows the song well enough to make an exterior combination of words and chords into an objective correlative for music that is entirely inside your head, but a chimp on a bicycle only needs to learn to balance and to make the pedals go around to get going.

The perfect example this morning is `Doubled Up,' the last song on the Heather Nova CD `Oyster' that I heard last night. The brain can learn to listen, but once the music is over, the brain tries to complete the experience by repeating the best part to itself, like a kid in Freud's book BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE that demands to hear a story over exactly the same way until the child is exhausted. The kid in Freud's book was obsessed with things that were out of sight. A single servant girl could take care of the kid when his mother was not at home, but his form of play with his toys was all "there" and "gone." I'm not going to explain that game. What is even better is that Heather Nova song:

Big sky above me, a river inside me
and I'm doubled up in love.

Feels good, it feels like poetry,
don't ask me to explain, it just
feels good, like poetry,
I'm doubled up again.

(5 stars) - Most Overlooked Masterpiece
I give 5 stars if everything on the album is good, plus their are outstanding tracks. This album has at least five rock masterpieces on it and the rest is real good. I've been playing this album frequently now for over 10 years and it sounds as great today as when it first came out.
Walk This World With Me, Island, Throwing Fire At The Sun, and Sugar rank among the best rock music ever produced. A unique strong voice which shows emotional intensity as very few ever have. Some of her songs (like Island) transport you to a safe, soft, dream landscape- and then - the guitars and voice rev up with an intensity that comes raging at you out of nowhere, throws you against the wall, and slaps you in the face. Yea, it gets your attention allright. What an experience! Unfortunately none of her other albums use this technique much if at all. This is the one Heather Nova Album everyone should own. It is a largely overlooked masterpiece that will stand the test of time and fads.

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