Artist of the Week: Diane Birch

Photo by Melodie McDaniel

Hometown: New York, N.Y.
Album: Bible Belt
For Fans Of: Carole King, Joss Stone, Duffy

It's no surprise that there are more than a few moments of fiery gospel and spiritual references on Bible Belt, the soulful debut from 26-year-old keyboardist Diane Birch. The daughter of a Seventh-day Adventist minister, as a child she traveled the world with her family and was forbidden to play secular music. Instead, Birch learned to play classical piano via the Suzuki method, and studied the local flora and fauna of exotic waystations like Australia, Zimbabwe and South Africa, tending pet silkworms in a shoebox. “I spent a lot of time in nature as a kid, so for me it was just normal to sit and watch the grass grow,” Birch sighs, admitting that she was scared stiff upon seeing her first shopping mall back in the States as a teen. “And if you don’t know any better, you’re really satisfied with simple things.”

But the devil soon found her, and meeting Birch in person hints at which way she turned: On a sunny Midwest day, the 5’9” singer is adorned in nothing but funereal black, from her ballet flats all the way up to her huge floppy-brimmed hat. Her doe eyes are framed by the same Louise Brooks bangs she began sporting in an earlier 1920s flapper period, a spinoff of her first form of rebellion—yes, she admits, she was a full-tilt, black-lipstick-and-white-face-powder goth.

“I wore wedding dresses, I wore wigs, I fanned myself all the time, I even had a parasol and I never went out in the sun,” Birch says. Unbeknownst to her parents, she began listening to the Cure, Bauhaus and Sisters Of Mercy. “I was a killer goth, I have to say, and I was pretty hardcore. And once my parents found my Christian Death albums, it, uhhh… didn’t go down too well.”

Alongside Mahalia-grand rafter raisers like “Rise Up” and “Fire Escape,” Bible Belt (out June 2 via S-Curve Records) features a funky Fender Rhodes shuffle called “Don’t Wait Up,” which Birch penned as a message to her fretful folks. “It was inspired by the fact that, when I was a goth, I’d only sort of get ready before I’d leave [the house], but then I’d leave and do even more intense makeup once I was out of the house,” she says. “I didn’t make it known to my parents because I knew it would freak them out. But a lot of times they’d wait up for me, so I was like ‘Don’t wait up for me, ‘cause you will not like what you see!’”

Birch's debut was produced by the same team that helmed Joss Stone's first seductive sets, and she's comfortable with the term “gospel pop.” “It’s okay, because I love a lot of the early gospel music,” she says. “I find it really beautiful.” But as for organized religion? She’s over it. “I find religion really poisonous, but I think spirituality is an incredibly vital part of existence,” Birch says. “And I’ve helped my parents to see that things are not so black and white. I mean, it’s not like if you’re not Christian or Seventh-day Adventist that you’re all of a sudden some heathen!”

Listen to "Don't Wait Up" from Diane Birch's Bible Belt: