Shara Worden and My Brightest Diamond New Album: `This Is My

Shara Worden and My Brightest Diamond New Album: 'This I...
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MUSIC
The Band Goes Marching On
Shara Worden of My Brightest Diamond. GETTY IMAGES
By JIM FUSILLI
Updated Oct. 1, 2014 12:15 a.m. ET
New York
Though delighted, the crowd that attended last Thursday's show at the Bowery
Ballroom here by Shara Worden might have been confused by the appearance of
BatalaNYC, an 11-piece all-women drum band that performed before she took
the stage. Its joyous, rattling polyrhythms were a marked contrast to the subtle,
studied music of Ms. Worden's earlier albums.
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Shara Worden and My Brightest Diamond New Album: 'This I...
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But it's a new era for Ms. Worden, who works under the name My Brightest
Diamond. While true to her history of flawlessly conveyed chamber rock
informed by her classical training, Ms. Worden's latest recording, "This Is My
Hand" (Asthmatic Kitty), is influenced by percussion, particularly
marching-band drums, she said last week during a stroll along the High Line
here. Crisp drumming welcomes listeners to the disc via its opening numbers
"Pressure" and "Before the Words," and it remains a compelling presence, adding
funk and dance rhythms to Ms. Worden's musical cache. At times, "This Is My
Hand" all but commands listeners to dance.
Which isn't to say she's abandoned her greatest strengths. Ms. Worden remains a
master at arranging electronic and acoustic instruments to serve her steady
contralto and rounded articulation of tones and words, but now they're
employed, on disc and in concert, in a more aggressive environment that's also
defined by blaring brass and electric guitars. Even a contemplative tune like
"Looking at the Sun" is propelled by the snap of snare drums and toms. Her
sympathetic in-studio band features the excellent bassist Chris Bruce and
drummers Earl Harvin and Brian Wolfe; producer Zac Rae played a variety of
instruments, as did Ms. Worden. "I'm Not the Bad Guy" rises from rock riffs
featuring Ms. Worden's guitar, while "Resonance" opens with textured
percussion and jazz chords on what may be synthesized guitar. On both tracks,
and throughout the album, Mr. Bruce is at the heart of the music's alluring sway.
In the studio, he's Ms. Worden's not-so-secret weapon, and to enter her universe
via his playing provides insight into her ingenious approach as a composer and
bandleader.
As she walked along the High Line, Ms. Worden said the inspiration for "This Is
Your Hand" came from her exploration of what she called "pre-music." She read
Daniel Levitin's "The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human
Nature," Jared Diamond's "The Third Chimpanzee" and Robert Graves's "The
White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of the Poetic Myth" to connect to music's
primordial roots. In her new song "Before the Words," she sings: "Before the
verse there was the sound / Before the form there was music."
Find your new home now ...
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Shara Worden and My Brightest Diamond New Album: 'This I...
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Also, she said, she was enthralled by
the music at a Thanksgiving Day
parade in her hometown of Detroit,
and saw how the attendees reacted to
1. Pressure
My Brightest Diamond
it with jubilation. It became a symbol:
music as essential to community
This Is My Hand
spirit. Though she never recorded her
compositions for marching bands, her
1. Pressure
3:57
2. Before the Words
3:27
3. This Is My Hand
3:45
4. Lover Killer
3:59
composition emerged, she said, and
5. I am not the Bad Guy
5:11
she tried "to subvert some of my
natural tendencies toward
6. Looking at the Sun
3:44
introversion."
7. Shape
4:28
At the Bowery Ballroom, it was hard to
believe Ms. Worden isn't a born
affection for the percussion, the brass
and the joy of sharing music stayed
with her. New processes for
extrovert. In a white suit with Joan Crawford shoulders, she declined to remain
behind her keyboards. Though BatalaNYC and a four-piece horn section played
on "Pressure," the concert's opening number, for the most part Ms. Worden was
accompanied instrumentally only by bassist Mason Lithgow, drummer Tim
Mulvenna and prerecorded sounds. In "I'm Not the Bad Guy," she issued harsh
lines on electric guitar. "Lover Killer" emphasized its funk underpinnings.
Gentleness appeared with songs from earlier albums, including "I Have Never
Loved Someone," a number dedicated to her son, Constantine, that she
performed solo, and "Be Brave," in which she sings: "Shara, now get to work.
Shara, this is going to hurt."
As the evening progressed, Ms. Worden grew more uninhibited. During "Apple,"
she picked up an electric thumb piano and danced furiously as Messrs. Lithgow
and Mulveena kept up the crackling rhythmic pulse. During "Freak Out," strobe
lights flashed as she and her onstage guests exploded into a maniacal
frenzy—and then stopped suddenly when the music returned to a less-frenetic
tempo. For her encore, she sang "Fever," a finger-snapping song by fellow
Detroiter Little Willie John, and left the stage to vamp among the crowd. It had
by then become accustomed to the thought that Ms. Worden was delivering a
different experience than might have been expected.
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Shara Worden and My Brightest Diamond New Album: 'This I...
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Mr. Fusilli is the Journal's rock and pop music critic. Email him at
[email protected] and follow him on Twitter @wsjrock
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