“I’ll be singing about freedom and how to be alive together and create a safe world where everyone can be in it and have freedom to have safety… I want nothing less than world peace,” proclaims singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and composer Shara Nova, better known as My Brightest Diamond. We’re discussing My Brightest Diamond’s upcoming headline tour, which kicks off tomorrow in Cleveland and will be at The Lounge at World Café Live next Friday, September 20th. And during a phone chat earlier this week, Nova tells me that the show will be a little bit different from what many fans may have come to expect of a My Brightest Diamond performance: “The general vibe is a lot of the new material, since so much of the past material is based on orchestration, whereas the new material was basically written to be performed solo.”
My Brightest Diamond’s upcoming area appearance is the night before Union Transfer hosts Set Yourself on Fire: The 20th Anniversary Tour from our mutual buddies and her former tourmates, Stars (who I’ll be chatting with again in the very near future): “Touring with them was so lovely! I had a really beautiful experience. They’re so supportive and sweet!” During our 20-minute convo, Nova proves to be equally enthusiastic as when discussing her time on the road with the Montreal indie rock outfit in 2018. Just days before the start of tour, our chat seems to serve as a brief and welcome break from all of her lastminute touring preparations, which she also seems to be handling solo. “I edit my own videos for the live show, so putting that into Ableton… It’s everything from, ‘What was that chord?’ to ‘Are the QR scan codes working for the merch table?’ to ‘What can I get onto the roof of the van?’” she tells me when I ask what the next few days are looking like for her.
This Friday, September 13th, will see the release of My Brightest Diamond’s sixth studio album and first for Western Vinyl, Fight the Real Terror. The writing of the album – whose title is a reference to Sinéad O’Connor’s famous SNL appearance – began during a four-day power outage in Nova’s hometown of Detroit, immediately following the announcement of the Irish musician and activist passing. “I found out she transitioned, and, within 45 minutes, the power went out… It was a call,” Nova explains, going on to say, “She was one of my heroes, sheroes, whatever… She was about looking at her whole life and the cost that she paid for truth speaking.”
Fight the Real Terror, the follow-up to 2018’s A Million and One, was written and recorder over the course of three weeks in the summer of 2023 and represents a stripped-down version of Nova. “The affects of the pandemic and looking at what is possible to do now has to be taken into consideration,” she tells me, explaining that the songs themselves reflect, “The use of sparseness and a singular voice, but also this question of how we have to be in this moment when there’s so much in this world that we have to respond to… while also dealing with one’s own personal vulnerabilities and fears.”
This is in pretty stark contrast to much of Shara Nova’s [non-My Brightest Diamond] work of recent years, which includes originating the role of Barsine in Illinoise, a Tony Award-winning Broadway show based on Sufjan Stevens’ 2005 Illinois LP (on which Nova appeared throughout, in addition to performing as part of the singer/songwriter’s touring string section); writing for Philadelphia’s own The Crossing choir (who performed her compositions for NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert), which earned her her first GRAMMY nominations; writing and performing on Nonesuch’s GRAMMY-nominated The Blue Hour; and creating a plethora of opera, classical, and choral works.
“I think because much of what I’ve been able to do as a composer is through commissions and grants, and makes for a very long process, for this one, I was like, ‘I wanna make a record as quickly as possible, make as big of a sound on guitar as I can, and be as vulnerable as I can be with my voice,’” Shara tells me of Fight the Real Terror, whose recording process also reflected this sentiment. She worked with producer Tom Schick – noted for his work with Norah Jones, She & Him, and Rufus Wainwright – at The Loft, the studio of Wilco (also regular collaborators of Schick’s).
And, according to Shara, the majority of Schick’s contributions to her sounds were inspirational. After entering The Loft, prior to bringing her band into the mix, Schick’s response to a full-band album was, “Nope, nope, you’re good enough with what you have… This is all you! Own it,” leading to Nova handling all of the instrumentation herself: “I’m playing everything. I’m playing bass, I’m playing guitar, I’m playing drums…” “You sometimes need someone from the outside to tell you these things, because otherwise you just always want to tweak and tweeze everything,” Shara tells me, going on to explain, “If you over polish it, you lose the visceral thing.”
*Get your tickets here.
