Shara Worden, owner of the positively angelic voice behind American chamber folk act MY BRIGHTEST DIAMOND, is no stranger to Australian shores. Her upcoming jaunt as one of many jewels in the resplendent Sydney-based Vivid Festival line-up marks her third tour down under, and her second appearance at the festival (she’s somewhat of a Vivid veteran, if you will). Last time round, Worden’s presence at the 2010 edition of the event was special for a couple of reasons; it was at the behest of two of her musical idols, curators Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed, and she was in the final stages of her first pregnancy.
“I was huge!” she laughs. “Yeah, that was the last full show that I did [before giving birth]. I couldn’t really walk that well.” No matter – clearly audiences don’t flock to Worden’s shows to see her walk, they come to hear her sing, and as one of the lucky audience members in attendance that night, I can attest to the fact that eight and a half months pregnant or not, girl can still belt out a tune.
Has having had a baby changed her outlook on song writing, or on life in general? “I do everything faster now,” she quips. “Yeah, I think for sure it’s changed the way I write because I have to write much quicker. I also think that it changes the way you see the world because suddenly your actions very, very directly affect someone else and you can see that. So I think that sense of responsibility is definitely in the songs for this new record.”
The new record she speaks of is her third, 2011’s All Things Will Unwind, a collection of songs that lean away from the dark folk/rock hybrid she’s known for and towards a lighter, more chamber pop sound. The title references a lyric in the record’s penultimate song, Everything is in Line. “The whole album in a way is trying to reconcile myself to a philosophy of the world which is about when we see the world as full of suffering or whether you see the infinite expanse of the universe. I guess the title is more like I’ve never really come to a conclusion on the record; it’s accepting the fact that there is decay and there is death and coming to peace with that.”
It’s also worth reminiscing a little about Worden’s very first trip here in 2008. She opened for one of her fellow countrymen also on his first tour of Australia, a then-upcoming indie folk singer (you may have heard of him) – Sufjan Stevens – who coincidentally also just so happens to be on the bill for Vivid this year. In what was too good an opportunity to pass up, I attempted to plant an idea in Worden’s head – how about Stevens joining her on stage to bust out an encore of Impossible Soul, the 25 minute long closer on his last album that she contributed guest vocals to? A reasonable request, surely. “Yeah! That would be fun. I’ve never sung that with him live. It’d be crazy,” she muses, before bursting my bubble. “[But] unfortunately I’m playing in Melbourne right after my show so I can’t stay to see Sufjan. [Though] I think they’re gonna be around for my show, so we’ll see.”
Collaborating is somewhat of a recurring theme when it comes to Worden’s musical output, which is certainly not restricted purely to her work in My Brightest Diamond. In addition to working with Stevens, she’s also appeared on tracks by the likes of David Byrne and Fatboy Slim, Owen Pallett and The Decemberists, to name a very short few. With this tendency for frequent experimentation, does she consider herself a restless creative spirit? “A curious one,” she counters, after a moment’s hesitation. “Right now I’m working on the music for a play [and] I’m gonna be in another Matthew Barney film in the fall. It’s such a wonderful treat for me to be in a different role and it flexes a different part of your brain. I guess it makes me a bit unfocused in terms of doing the kind of straight rock ‘n’ roll career; it might actually be kind of bad for having a career,” she laughs,” but it makes for a super rich life. At some point I probably need to be focused but it’s hard for me to just do one thing and not get bored.”
Hearing Worden namedrop Matthew Barney immediately sets my mind racing – in case you didn’t realise, that connection leaves her just one small degree of separation away from Barney’s wife, the inimitable Icelandic avant pop queen, Björk. Now there’s an idea for an interesting collaboration. “Yeah, I mean she’s amazing, but what would you do? You’d just stand there and watch her!” Worden laughs. A genuinely humble response; little does she realise that her own live performances tend to have the exact same effect on her own audiences. She is a truly unique talent with a voice to behold; catch My Brightest Diamond at Vivid and you’ll see exactly what I mean.
Check out the foot-stomping theatrical in studio video for Be Brave below.
Comments
Post a Comment