Heather Nova

South

Still Heather Nova

Review Score:

(8/10)
After I first listened to Heather Nova's new album I was inclined to ratify some of the lukewarm sentiments expressed by others devoted to her music since /Oyster/ (or even /Glow Stars/). There is no denying that the new effort sacrifices some of Nova's celestial atmospherics in favor of a more traditional and more bland pop sound. Some of the songs, such as "Virus of the Mind" and "If I Saw You in a Movie," seem produced for radio--and rather bad radio, at that. At worst, these lowlights brandish lyrics that seem adapted from trite teenage love letters, e.g., "This long distance has me out of my mind," or "Maybe there's no rainbow but my love for you still shines." On her previous records, even when venturing perilously close to Hallmark territory, Nova could still execute a legitimately moving song by carefully placing a perfect poetic image just where one least expects to find it. For example, we might have thought the song "Maybe an Angel" heralded a stale metaphor, but the opening vocal demonstrated the wholeheartedness and grim solemnity of the moniker with the spine-chilling words, almost whispered, "I put my hands where your wings should be.... I put my feet where the earth should be... And when you said that you were dead I hung on." Nothing on /South/ reinvigorates and reclaims such an ordinary idea with such vivacity and authenticity.

Nevertheless, the album includes a refreshing number of very good songs that would have sounded at home on either of her two most lauded records. "Just Been Born," "Waste the Day," "It's Only Love," "Gloomy Sunday" (a cover), "Like Lovers Do," and certainly others had me hooked by the second or third listening, even if none of them induced me to mine the lyric book like a dervish and declare, "Wow."

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