From the Cutout Bin: Heather Nova - Siren

Welcome to From the Cutout Bin, where we dig up old CDs that have been forgotten for whatever reason and can now be found in the dollar (or quarter) bin at your local used CD store (if your community still has a used CD store). This installment features 1998's Siren, by Bermudian Lilith Fair vet Heather Nova.

Heather Nova made her bones in the US with 1995's Modern Rock hit "Walk This World."


But that song's not on Siren, which I found for 50 cents at my local used bookstore. Instead, this is the follow-up, which was obviously expected to be a hit. There are three different producers, including Jon Kelly (known for his work in the UK with British adult-friendly pop stars like Kate Bush and the Beautiful South) and Youth, who was fresh off producing the Verve's 1997 masterpiece Urban Hymns. Superstar mixer Andy Wallace (whose credits include Nirvana's Nevermind, Soul Asylum's Grave Dancers Union, Screaming Trees' Sweet Oblivion, Jeff Buckley's Grace, The Toadies' Rubberneck, Rage Against the Machine's Evil Empire, the Wallflowers' Bringing Down the Horse, Everclear's So Much for the Afterglow, etc.*) worked on 12 of the 14 tracks. And as soon as it came out, Nova went on tour with Lilith Fair II.

(*Seriously, that list could have been twice as long, and still would have included nothing but platinum albums. Someday, I may do a post on Andy Wallace and the Lord-Alge brothers, the great mixers of the '90s.)

The problem is, it wasn't really a hit, at least in the US (unlike a lot of artists, Nova's Wikipedia page is pretty scarce, so I don't know how these songs charted overseas. Apparently, she's pretty big in New Zealand). It hit the 170s on the Billboard Top 200, the same as the previous album, and landed one track on the Adult Top 40.

Two songs on this album are great, in that "summer road trip when the only radio station you can find is one playing hot adult contemporary" sense: "London Rain" (that aforementioned Adult Top 40 hit) and "What a Feeling." The rest are pretty generic, inhabiting that gray area in between trip-hoppy stuff like Beth Orton and straightforward singer-songwriter stuff like Sheryl Crow.

Siren certainly didn't end Heather Nova's career; she segued over to the V2 label, was featured on the I Am Sam soundtrack among much more high-profile artists, co-wrote a comeback single with Dido and the Matrix that flopped, and then went the indie route. A new album, The Jasmine Flower, comes out Oct. 10 and then she'll do a two-week tour of Europe. She's worked with Moby, had her songs placed on a number of movies and TV shows, and earned a coveted spot on Divas of the Court: Songs from the WBNA. And hey, I already resold this CD on Amazon for a cool 15-cent profit, so I guess the demand's still there.