The Unhip Hotness: My Brightest Diamond
Over the last month or so, I’ve been totally obsessed with the new My Brightest Diamond album, A Thousand Shark’s Teeth. The attention to detail on this masterpiece is amazing. While listening to it, there are so many moments where I think to myself things like “wow, the tone and placement of that one drum hit was perfect.” And while I’ve been jamming this relentlessly, the album has had a rather quiet and uninterested reception in the blogosphere.
My Brightest Diamond is the moniker for Shara Worden, a multi-instrumental singer songwriter that is most notably known for being part of Sufjan Stevens‘ band (Remember when he was the hottness? Seems like ages ago). Her debut album, Bring Me The Workhorse, dropped back in 2006, but while she had been writing that, she was also writing Shark’s Teeth. In fact, this sophomore release as My Brightest Diamond had taken about 6 years to create, as it was originally intended to be a string quartet piece. Here’s a video where she talks about it:
Shark’s Teeth – Part I from My Brightest Diamond on Vimeo.
So you know I’m love with it, but why isn’t anyone else? Almost all the reviews I have read for this just don’t know what to make of it, give it their par score, and move on. There are a few reasons why this gem is sliding under the radar. First, it’s because she is a woman. Seriously, if you can think of a female artist or female fronted band that is respected in the indie music world, someone paralled them to Worden in a review somewhere on the Internet. That’s really impressive to be able to sound like every single other female musician on the planet all at the same time.
Most commonly she is compared to St. Vincent, which is extremely ridiculous considering the only thing their music has in common is they both sing and use lots of instrumentation. I went back to listen to Marry Me after reading review after review complaining that she sounded too much like her fellow Sufjan Stevens alumni, and other than both of these albums being great, there is almost no similarity. St. Vincent is light and upbeat, Shark’s Teeth is lush, serious, and downbeat. They couldn’t be any different. And anyone who would mistake their voices for the other needs to get their ears checked out.
The music journalist world is still greatly dominated by dudes, and most just don’t really “get” the female music aesthetic. There are so many terrible pop female vocalists that exist, that it can be easy to tune out anything that sounds similar. Also, the pop music world is still greatly dominated by guitars, and other than a few rare cases like Carrie Brownstein and Marnie Stern, there aren’t exactly a ton of chicks who can shred. So music created by women on the whole is regarded to be on a lower level by most. Ok, enough feminism class.
The other problem for this album to catch fire across the interwebs is that it implements too much classical artillery. Timelessness and orchestration are two concepts that just aren’t in fashion these days, but that doesn’t make them any less impressive. I’m always a fan of doing more with less, but there’s nothing wrong with using every possible resource to achieve perfection. The meticulous nature of this album is just breathtaking to me, and I can’t think of another LP to come out this year that seems so purposeful and so on the mark at the same time. Get hip to it:
My Brightest Diamond : Ice And The Storm
My Brightest Diamond : To Pluto’s Moon
Buy A Thousand Shark’s Teeth here
Disappear (Live on City Centre Social) from My Brightest Diamond on Vimeo.
Apples (Live at Tonic) from My Brightest Diamond on Vimeo.
- Posted by Davy Minor on August 20, 2008 at 3:30 pm
