| "I am woman," says Sheila
Nicholls in one interview. "Hear me pontificate." And oh she pop-pontificates on
her instrumentally and lyrically over-the-top new career-making album Wake. If
Tori Amos, Ani DiFranco or Alannis Morissette are having any thoughts as they enter their
30s of tempering their famous art-pop expressions of the fury of the woman culturally
scorned, this 20something acrobatically voiced feminista is clearly willing to step in
cover their vacated position.
Both thanks to and in spite of the
hyper-creative instrumental frenzy of superproducer Glen Ballard's arrangements, Nicholls'
second self-released record brings a strikingly original musical palette to a public
persona that is distinctly second-hand: she wears her devotion to fellow bisexual
singer-songwriter-entrepreneur Ani DiFranco so brazenly on her record sleeve that one
photo virtually duplicates the cover of DiFranco's Little Plastic Castle: natty
multi-colored dreads hang from her head as she stares at a fishbowl, complete with (yes)
little plastic castle. Blessed with pliable, raw, rangy eccentric vocals, English born LA
resident Nicholls fleetingly catches the cadences of many different singers: from the
burbly eccentricity of Bjork to the hissy-fits of Morrisette, from the smart spice of
DiFranco to the staid sweetness of Amy Mann and Emily Saliers.
Nicholls, who has actually been performing in
America for the better part of a decade without much attention, almost lets her posturing
overshadow her ample talent. Her songwriting, full of catchy multi-octave hooks and
surprising key changes, deserves points for boldness and not devoid of snappy clever
lines. But her words are a bit more strident and less interesting than some of the elder
stateswomen she idolizes: less mature than DiFranco, less honestly confessional but
occasionally as spacey and esoteric as Amos.
She somehow seems a logical choice for Ballard,
who coated Morissette's quirky but ultimately airheaded songs with enough consumerist pap
to help her outsell less commercial she-singers who can write circles around her. Ballard
layers on track after track of sitar, strings, all manner of hand-held acoustic
instruments, record-spinning DJs. Nicholls plays piano on every track, but half the time
the keys are nearly impossible to make out amid the piles and piles of brightly colored
pop production. Interestingly, some of the best tracks on the album were not produced by
Ballard. A handful of songs bear equal creativity to the superproducer's stuff but with
considerably more restraint (case in point: Jakko Jakszyk's rich string-bending acoustic
cover of Leslie Duncan's "Love Song").
At least one Industry press outlet speculated
that Sheila Nicholls might find a market in Christian Contemporary Music, which seems
absurd considering the album is dedicated to "the infinite, universal, indefinable
goddess who makes all things possible." Prone to tough girl expletives and frank talk
about her personal life ("I'm bisexual and so are all the boys I f---"),
Nicholls hardly seems the top candidate for the tightly conservative CCM industry.
Still, her lyrics flirt with religious themes,
in her build-me-no-walls, categorize-me-not, sex-is-so-important-and-I-am-so-oppressed
sort of way. "We talked of God about God and the limbs on the floor, and the
legalization of deviance," she sings in one song co-written by Ballard. In others she
imagines romances between Delilah and Icarus, and a Biblical era female "Moses with a
different band" who pointedly tells her husband where to stuff his patriarchy. Her
best shot at a chart-topper appears to be the catchy, sugar-sodden "Faith,"
whose inspirational Adult Contemporary sweep has already earned pre-movie airplay in
Megaplexes.
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