Bring Me The Workhorse
Today is the release date for Bring Me The Workhorse by My Brightest Diamond. My Brightest Diamond is Shara Worden whom Sufjan fans will recognize as the head cheerleader in the Illinoisemakers band as well as his frequent opening act.
Brooklyn Vegan recently interviewed Shara and asked about the new album and working with Sufjan:
Wes: Was it a natural move for the record to be released on Asthmatic Kitty after working with Sufjan?
Shara: Yes. Sufjan has been telling me for a couple of years that he wanted to support me in any way that he could. I was hesitant at first because I didn’t know them and how they were as a label.
Wes: Does this predate you playing and recording with Sufjan?
Shara: Yes it does. But then I was able to tour with him and meet the people at the label, see over the course of time how they do things and what their intentions were with me and I felt really comfortable with them.
Wes: Do any of your fellow Illinoise Makers appear on the album?
Shara: No, in fact the string players I played with before ended up working on Sufjan’s Illinois and now they’ll go on tour with the both of us. So it’s all a blend now without ownership or anything like that.
Be sure to read the full interview and view more photos.
Release Date: August 22, 2006
Listen to the full album stream at Asthmatic Kitty.
Buy the CD from Amazon.
Press release and information from Asthmatic Kitty:
Bring Me The Workhorse
My Brightest Diamond is Shara Worden, a trained opera singer turned pop songwriter whose debut album Bring Me The Workhorse courageously gathers all the essential elements of classical and pop to create an album that begins to break down the barriers of both worlds. These songs are simultaneously gentle and urgent, evoking moments of tremendous joy and sorrow with the magnitude of Italian opera and the modesty of a Japanese haiku.
Bring Me The Workhorse shows unusual versatility in a singer who can channel the vocal theatrics of Kate Bush, the soulful seductiveness of Nina Simone and the gothic pop of Portishead, sometimes in one song. Shara’s songwriting blurs the lines between rock show and recital, incorporating the contrapuntal elements of a baroque love song alongside love ballads and rock anthems. Her vocal lines reached for Puccini, but her guitar style is akin to Blonde Redhead or PJ Harvey. The center of gravity here is the workmanship of a woman whose imagination has no limits.
Under Shara’s gaze, ordinary objects begin to have supernatural meanings. A robin’s nest, a grocery list, a glass bottle come to represent love, mortality, and the overwhelming need to “freak out” every once in a while. Shara is not afraid to use superlatives. But she also considers the benefits of self-control. This is most evident in the carefulness of her arrangements. Earthy drums and bass guitar are augmented by Celeste, music boxes, prepared piano, and a string quartet; each song is scrupulously composed and arranged by Shara herself.
Shara’s songwriting reconciles the high art of opera with the low-brow of the folk song by compounding them into a form that is both as sublime as it is pragmatic. The music is set in transcendent landscapes familiar to Wagner’s operas, but it is also planted firmly in the materials of everyday life: dirt, tree branches, bird feathers and thrown away charms. Strings and chimes beckon mysterious apparitions, but Shara’s tone of voice is dead serious. Almost every song pivots around a moment of crisis, distilling stories to their most distressing points of contact: a phone call, an injured horse, a dragonfly caught in a spider’s web. Shara doesn’t share all the information — just the stuff that matters. The effect is a sensational compression of time, in which an entire event is summarized in a single note. This, of course, is the essence of opera. But My Brightest Diamond is much more than musical theater. There is a continuous reminder of ordinary life — phone calls, cardboard boxes, pieces of paper—as well as the humor one might find in an old TV episode of Wonder Woman or Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Shara’s songs reconcile all the complex emotions found in each of us: she can grieve as comfortably as she can laugh, sometimes in the same breath.
Tracklist:
- Something Of An End
- Golden Star
- Gone Away
- Dragonfly
- Freak Out
- We Were Sparkling
- Disappear
- The Robin’s Jar
- Magic Rabbit
- The Good & The Bad Guy
- Workhorse
August 22nd, 2006 admin
Entry Filed under: Press Releases, Related Artists