My Brightest Diamond features Shara Worden, a New York-based sometime Sufjan Stevens collaborator, whose parents were a suitably musical, yet unconventional, National Accordion Champion and a classical organist.

Mining a seam of musical (melo)drama similar to that of Bat for Lashes, and, in Worden, possessing a female vocalist of considerable yet quirky power, they bring us an album of serious, gothic, yet definite beauty. This is one of those releases that, pleasingly, manages to create a unique atmosphere. In this case one based around motifs of impending doom, longing, obsession and – we kid you not – dead animals. It draws the listener into its strange, unsettling and yet engrossing world.

Worden’s singing voice, with its whispers, rolled ‘r’s and other mannered tics, is a bit of an acquired taste, but certainly does possess an impressive emotional range. It runs the gamut from romantic exhilaration in Golden Star, through oppressive creepiness (The Robin’s Jar) and obsessive longing on the album’s stand-out track Gone Away. She can also do raucous freak-out (on, err Freak Out) as well as slow near-operatic swoon.

Lyrically the songs work better when steering away from the often slightly over-worked metaphors found in, for example, Dragonfly or Magic Rabbit, and focusing instead on less oblique relationship concerns. The woman longing for her lover’s return, on Gone Away, diligently hoarding “every bit of paper” in desperate hope that he will come back, or the simple question “Why does it hurt more to recall your good side?” from The Good and Bad Guy. Musically the vocal and lyrical range is backed by a range of instruments, from lush strings to glockenspiels as well as the usual guitars, synths and bass lines.

Things definitely begin to pall a little after the first 6 tracks. Disappear feels very much like a bit of musical ballast with nothing particularly musically or lyrically inspiring to offer (indeed, as I write this now after repeated listenings, I still couldn’t tell you how this one goes). Towards the end of the album, the repetition of the key themes and moods becomes a little tiresome, with the last track featuring yet another moribund animal. This is a shame, since the brightest and best moments of the album are probably destined to stay floating around one’s mind for a long time after this intriguing piece of work finishes.
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Links
My Brightest Diamond [official site] [myspace]
mp3:> My Brightest Diamond: Something Of An End
[From Bring Me The Workhorse; out now on Asthmatic Kitty]