PCL presents Diane Birch

Diane Birch’s latest album, the self-produced Nous, is her bravest and most independent work to date. Written and recorded mostly in Berlin, Nous draws on musical influences as varied and rich as Birch’s own international upbringing—from her childhood as a preacher’s daughter in Zimbabwe and South Africa, to her wedding dress and black-lipstick days as a Goth teen in Portland, to her late teens in L.A. where she paid her musical dues playing piano and singing covers in fancy hotels. She was discovered on MySpace in 2007, and shortly thereafter moved to London and New York to begin her recording career.

In Nous, Birch channels Ambrosian hymns, moody soul, Debussy and RnB, all brought together with an unflagging attention to classic pop songwriting and the intricate possibilities of the piano. Lyrically, Nous explores questions of love, power, gender, and loss, along with Birch’s recurring odes to the concept of a "higher self.” Indeed, the album’s title doesn’t only mean “we” in French. Nous is an ancient Greek term for “awareness.”