Oyster by Heather Nova

Oyster, Heather Nova's second album, arrived in 1994 with Youth producing, and it's the sound of a Bermudian drifter who had finally found her footing in London. She spent most of her childhood on a sailboat crisscrossing the Atlantic, studied film at the Rhode Island School of Design, and only started writing and performing after moving to London in 1990. You can hear the open water anyway: a keening, wide-eyed voice and guitars that rise and fall like a swell.

The critics were kind. Katherine Monk of the Vancouver Sun gave it three stars out of four and singled out the singing, and AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine counted its peaks among her finest work, praising how easily she moved between ballads, guitar pop and hard rock. "Walk This World" is the song that travelled furthest. Siren came next, and with it the American breakthrough.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.