Berlin based alt-pop singer-songwriter NOVAA draws on past experiences with hypnotic, deeply personal new track ‘Can’t Take This Silence’, lifted from the forthcoming album ‘She’s A Rose’ due 16th July. Fusing delicate hazy melodies over Novaa’s honest lyricism, she consistently creates stories listeners can identify with.
Novaa details the track: “Can’t Take This Silence is a song about knowing that you will be ghosted before the ghosting happens. It’s a moment when you’re with the person you’re seeing, you’re dating and you realise that the silence that’s about to come over you is already there. It’s funny how very often I write songs about things that will happen to me later. With this song it was the same. I met up with someone and started writing this song while we were seeing each other. Then the ghosting happened and I realised what I was trying to tell myself with „Can’t Take This Silence“ before. Even though this song hurts a lot, it also feels very safe to me. It’s cold but the kind of cold that lets you know that you’re gonna be inside and warm again soon.”
About the video: “For the video I wanted to convey that feeling as well – being very close to someone and at a moment’s notice getting ignored by them. To me the bad thing about ghosting is not the ghosting itself but the feelings that the other person leaves you alone with. Desire, love – whatever you want to call it – can be really heavy when someone dumps it on you. When I wrote the script I was immediately thinking of Dana as the other protagonist. She was already part of my recent video ‘She’s A Rose’ and I loved working with her. Luckily she wanted to be part of the video, as well as Sven Paetsch who shot the video, Malte Schwind who assisted him and Verena Post and Kiara Schlichtling who helped me with the styling and set design.”
Minimalist sounds, intense feelings bear fruition on Novaa’s new album ‘SHE’S A ROSE’, painting a personal picture of gender roles and the challenges women encounter today. “It was something like a diary to me”, Novaa describes the album. “it was my attempt to find my place in the world. And the attempt to draw a picture of this constantly changing position.” A picture in eleven songs, eleven intense compositions that go to the very core of what makes us human; interlacing beauty and pain, big feelings and small scenes from everyday life.
‘SHE’S A ROSE’ came together in 2020, with a pared down set-up, constrained by the pandemic. “This time, I actually did everything by myself – including the production. During quarantine, I only had a microphone, a guitar, a midi-keyboard and my laptop with me, and this really influenced recordings”, Novaa says. “I recorded a lot of acoustics.” Apart from her minimal equipment, she also had access to an ukulele and a flute. “After finishing recordings, I met with a few fellow musicians” – mostly digital meetings, however. Novaa combined the results of these collaborations to create an extremely personal, but also radically independent, confident, and determined record.
24-year old Novaa’s star is on the rise. Her recent album ‘The Futurist’ (2020) and self-titled debut (2019) were lauded by tastemaker press and peers alike including Complex Magazine, The Line of Best Fit, Clash, Dummy Magazine, Kaltblut Magazine, Nothing But Hope and Passion et al. 2021 will bear witness to Novaa’s brand new full length effort ‘She A Rose’, marking her out as a rare talent to watch out for this year.
‘Can’t Take This Silence’ will be available digitally across all platforms on 16th July
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