Restlessness percolated through the crowd, the kind of energy that comes naturally when a bunch of twenty-somethings cram into a small, sweaty room on a Tuesday night. What Gold Diggers lacks in size, it makes up for in versatility. Sitting along a busy stretch of Santa Monica Boulevard, the venue hosts local bands and touring indie acts from across the musical spectrum almost every night. And it’s not just a bar and music venue; it also doubles as a boutique hotel and recording studio.
As soon as I walked through the front door, I spotted “Notice of Filming” signs plastered across the walls. I also couldn't ignore the three video cameras strategically positioned around the room, all pointed toward the stage. Did I mention there was a guy in an astronaut costume wandering through the audience? Clearly, this wasn’t a normal Tuesday night.
I later learned the performance was being livestreamed as part of MTV Underground, a showcase for up-and-coming artists leading up to the VMAs. (The VMAs are still a thing?)
At the center of all this was Baby Nova. Originally from Nova Scotia, she may be far from home, but you wouldn’t know it from her music. Her debut album, Shhugar, released in January, feels tailor-made for Southern California: the perfect soundtrack for cruising down PCH with the windows down or disappearing into the desert for a weekend in Joshua Tree. She occupies a darker corner of the indie-pop world and has drawn comparisons to artists like Lana Del Rey, but a sly sense of humor runs beneath the melancholy. Between her wry lyrics and cinematic music videos, I hear a little Dusty Springfield (one of her biggest inspirations), filtered through a Tarantino lens.
Walking out to “Cutting Up Peaches,” the opening track from Shhugar, Baby Nova and her band wasted little time whipping the room into a frenzy. The moody, cinematic quality of her recordings translated remarkably well to the stage; the live setting added immediacy. Midway through the set, she gave the crowd a sneak peek of what’s coming down the pipeline, with the new song “Palm Springs.”
After working her way through most of the album, she closed her set with the emotionally charged “Cutting Season.” Baby Nova may be relatively new to the music scene, but she's already figured out the hard part: making deeply personal songs feel like they belong to everyone in the room. The lyrics give you something to relate to, the hooks give you something to sing along with, and the rest makes you want to drive through the desert with the windows down. Not bad for a Tuesday night.
