Belated Review: My Brightest Diamond - "This is My Hand" (Asthmattic Kitty/Paper Bag, 2014)

This week is the CMJ Music Marathon in NYC (!!!), and so in accordance with the festivities there are no new releases this week (that I know of). So I'll write a belated review of one my recent favorites.

I've been a fan of MBD from the beginning. During my angsty high school Sufjan Steven's craze (which evidently never ended), I learned to explore other artists on Asthmatic Kitty's roster after realizing that Sufjan himself collaborates with almost every artist he signs. St. Vincent, Helado Negro, Lily & Madeline, Linda Perhacs, Sisyphus, and The Welcome Wagon are among my favorites. And My Brightest Diamond, who I argue should have replaced Adele to record that 007 theme. Check out this quirky music video for "From the Top of the World" and you'll see what I mean.

Her artist website describes her truthfully:

Not many people can front a rock band, sing Górecki’s Third Symphony, lead a marching band processional down the streets of the Sundance film festival and perform in a baroque opera of their own composing all in a month’s time. But Shara Worden can.

I view the Detroit native as a classically trained punk goddess. Her debut record Bring Me the Workhorse (Asthmatic Kitty, 2006) was totally hardcore to say the least. Characterized by out-of-tune guitars and loosened drum heads, fronted by theater performer singing about dead birds–no one combines beauty and ugly quite as well as Shara Worden.

But her latest installment This is My Hand is *all* beauty.

It introduces the listener in the best way a record can: with a marching band. The Detroit Party Marching Band, to be exact. A percussion ensemble plays alone for 12 measures or so before the horn and woodwind sections kick in. Shara Worden is here, folks, and she's riding on an audible chandelier. "Mountain on top, a fire below / a pressure grows, pressure". Pressure indeed. She plays with her backup singers and straight-faced guerrilla drummers to achieve a fearsome dance-pop sound that you wouldn't expect. How does the rest of the record sound?

Track five, "I Am Not the Bad Guy" goes proto-punk. "Lover/Killer" is a swirling pseudo-Motown sound (stream below). "So Easy" makes my urban apartment feel like a spaceship. "Apparition" is based upon a ghost story.

And the quality of production on this record is astounding! It's mastered exceedingly well and it has more elaborate instrumentation than any of her previous recordings, but none of her beautiful poetry or badassery or personality that I used to associate with MBD has changed at all–in fact all of that's been enhanced.

This is My Hand is available at record stores now. For all you Michiganders, she visits Grand Rapids on November 13 at the Wealthy Theater. Get tickets here.

Stream "Lover/Killer" below via Soundcloud.