It is no use to compare Shara Nova, otherwise known as My Brightest Diamond, to PJ Harvey, Beth Gibbons, and Sinead O’Conner—though she certainly channels all of those great women in rock n roll. She’s on par with each of them, as a songwriter and performer. The last, Sinead, was the inspiration for her latest album, Fight The Real Terror, when, on the day of Sinead’s death, a storm knocked out all of the power in her house: what she thought was a fitting tribute to a powerful light that had gone out in the world. “But it’s easier to say too late / Such a catalytic act / Than to respect a living and furious / Woman.”

Shara, like Sinead, is a living and furious woman, who has made waves opening for such acts as Wilco and the Decemberists on tour. She is a voice as powerful as any voice in the modern age, and she uses her classically-trained voice on this album to sing about the heaven and safety every living soul longs for. But she also sings about injustice (“Whose picture am I gonna / Tear up tonight? / Who’s gonna stand with me shoulder to shoulder / To take down another / Untouchable power?”). Recently she addressed a fan’s question, whether she is a “political” artist and she answered something to the tune of, if that’s what it takes to care for my neighbor, then yes I am.

The album is not overtly political in most places, however, but deeply personal, and therefore deeply universal. Singing about how “Even Warriors” want some place to come home to and someone to hold them in their arms. Shara, who’s been through a divorce herself, ruminates on an “Imaginary Lover,” and offers the humorous “Rule Breaker,” which gives ten rules of who not to date. Like her rule six on the song: “Rule number six / Don’t date another artist / Too much ego in the room / With artists.”

She doesn’t come across as an artist with ego, however, but one with real confidence and purpose. To provide others with a “Safe House,” to champion romantic and platonic love alike, and to lead people to a higher purpose and a longing that we would one day sing “a song of triumph.” While her previous albums are certainly victorious (“Like bubbles in champagne / no one can stop what’s going up,” she sings on “Champagne” off her last album), this one is more steeped in the social and spiritual needs of the masses, something that has been a big focus of her Grammy-nominated choir works in recent years.

It is a moving album, with enough satisfying differences from her past albums to make her a sort of pioneer in the indie/alternative world. In a testament to her power as a producer as well as a writer and performer, she brought the album, recorded at home in “demos,” to her chosen producer who said, We’re not redoing this; this is good as it is. It’s an album that I think will stand the test of time, with its impressive vocal performances, its alternately raucous and sweet instrumentals, its universal themes, and its spiritually optimistic and world weary and world wise songs. My Brightest Diamond is back, and her latest album is a triumph, putting her on par with the greatest female composers/performers in modern rock.

Order Fight the Real Terror by My Brightest Diamond HERE