The turn towards electronic music that Shara Nova took on the 2014 album This Is My Hand continues on her fifth full-length album as My Brightest Diamond. It is not really an album for the clubs, though, despite the title of the opening track, That’s Me on the Dance Floor. (The presence of chicken-scratch guitar does not a Chic record make.) Instead, Nova once again offers art pop that is best when it’s less concerned with the art than the pop. For instance, on the gorgeously sad Another Chance, the claimed influence of Anita Baker comes through in a ballad that combines regret and hope.
But there’s surely a reason why Nova has worked with so many fantastic artists – Laurie Anderson, David Byrne, Sufjan Stevens and the Decemberists among them – without exactly establishing herself at their level.
There’s a certain chilliness to A Million and One, an album that seems on the verge of becoming terrific without ever quite getting there. The percussively driven You Wanna See My Teeth and Sway shift the emphasis away from melody, but they don’t have the drama to carry the weight being asked of them at the centre of the album. It’s one that never sounds as if it wants you to relax, but neither does it ratchet up the tension enough. It falls betwixt and between.
