"All those words...all that praise, yet not once do I see the word Infectious....that is the word I would use. She arrives with great subtlety and just digs into your soul."

I went to see her in concert a couple of months ago at a little club in Leicester, England (called the Charlotte). She was fantastic to watch, lots of guitar strutting and moving vocals. Included a couple of tracks that I didn't know instantly, but when I got home I managed to listen to the albums again, and realised I did know them after all. I also managed to get one prized possession, Heather's song list for the show.

As for the girl herself, I know precious little, although the following information I have gathered together over the last few months.

Born in Bermuda in 1968 (two years after my sister was born there funnily enough), Heather grew up loving the ocean. At the age of seven her parents took her out of school, and the family set sail on a fourty-foot yatch. Many of her teenage years were spent with her family sailing around the West Indies. "Spending all that time on the boat with just my family," she remembers, "I learned to use my imagination a lot because I wasn't distracted by other kids or TV or whatever. Though there was no electricity on the craft, there was "this small wind generator on the mast...and it only powered the tape deck!" So, as the Nova floating household sailed the Caribbean, Heather developed her own musical sensibility, listening to cassettes of her parent's 60s and 70s pop classics (ranging from the Velvet Underground to Roberta Flack to Neil Young to Van Morrison to the Rolling Stones to beyond...) and playing violin and guitar.

At the age of 15 Heather and family re-rooted as it were, to give Heather an education, she went to school in the States, but found it difficult to interact with other children. "I didn't feel like I fitted in", she was to say. And so, as a substitute for communication with the others around her, she took to song-writing, using as her influences the "gutteral, primal, emotional" music of Neil Young, Joni Mitchell etc.

Music was a primary love for Heather Nova and at the age of 19 she left home (or boat) and went to the Rhode Island School of Design to study painting and film. "I was doing the sound side of film," she recalls. "I got into the studio and started doing films where I would make the soundtracks first and then do the Super 8 films to go with the soundtracks; after a while, these films started taking the form of songs."

It was then she decided to go into music, moving, briefly, to New York in search of a record contract. She made a three-track demo tape, taking it to various record companies in New York, only to be turned away, typically by the Receptionist at Columbia Records.

Then onto London, England, where an early demo landed Heather gigs at the Cafe de Piaf, the Borderline and the Camden Falcon. Her first recordings were released after a performance for the British Academy of Songwriters, who agreed to release the rare album titled "These Walls" (Now The First Recordings). Reviewed in the New Musical Express, it created the following reaction:

HEATHER NOVA
These Walls (Big Cat)
"...Heather Nova is the authentic voice of Woodstock. 'These Walls', however, is actually rather nice, in a 'folky - strum - around - the - campfire - with - the - chance - of - a - shag - in - the - wigwam - later - on' kinda way."

This met with little success, mainly due to poor distribution, and is now a very rare, and valuable collection.

Going everywhere with her guitar. She eventually met up with ex-Killing Joke guitarist, Youth, who released Glow Stars, a collection of demos, on his own Butterfly label in May 1993.

Sounding "as delicate and fey as All About Eve" the album failed to establish any real idenitity for the struggling Nova, but did win Heather several high-profile support slots on tours with Bob Mould, and the, then, fellow fledglings, the Cranberries, and on these Heather, with just her guitar for accompaniment, excelled.

Managers, publishers and labels expressed interest, and a single soon surfaced on Big Cat records. Spurred on by an out pouring of press, Heather threw a band together and set about playing her first ever accompanied live shows. Somewhere along the line, it was decided to record the gigs at London's Mean Fiddler and Powerhaus for a live album. The result was "Blow", Heather's debut live album, released on Big Cat Records in October 1993.

It was not until nearly two years later that Heather's first proper studio album was released. Unleashed on the world at large in November 1994, Oyster was a brilliant album, being passionate, strong, and yet strangely evocative. Produced again by Youth, it has been described as placing it's author somewhere between the confessionals of Jeff Buckley and the otherworldliness of Tori Amos. Introduced by the brilliant single Walk This World, this was the album that introduced most fans of Heather to her music, and is eminently listenable to again and again. One track has caused a storm of emotions, exposing the emotional undercurrents of domestic abuse. The track, Island, was dedicated to Nicole Brown Simpson, the murdered wife of OJ Simpson, on tours, provoking mixed responses from audiences, particularly in Los Angeles.