My Brightest Diamond Continues To Add It All Up With All Things Will Unwind

Shara Worden has built quite the name for herself in the alternative music scene, but come October when her third album All Things Will Unwind as My Brightest Diamond is released, she will certainly ruffle some feathers. Recorded completely with the chamber music all-stars of the yMusic ensemble, Worden delivers ten tracks that not only redefine her catalogue but wholly reinvent it. This is arguably her strongest, most cohesive and inspired album so far. While she’s known as one unafraid to push artistic boundaries to dive deeper at producing art that moves her and the listener, this is her most lucid attempt at doing so, and ultimately an utterly mesmerizing work.

Worden initially piqued the interest of fans with the eerie and dramatic melancholic grandeur of Bring Me The Workhorse (2006), with songs like “Something of an End” and “Dragonfly,” showcasing her hand at crafting intense music rooted in jazz/rock rhythms and operatic vocal melodies. She pulled from a variety of influences to create a sound that was moody without being sophomoric, emotional without being cloying and was altogether decisively individual. Live shows also demonstrated Worden’s seemingly boundless energy, with her playing a wide range of instruments and bouncing around the stage, fully commanding its space with her booming voice. While she’d worked as the band Awry and as part of Sufjan Stevens’ cast of Illinoisemakers, it finally felt like Worden had found her place in the industry, and not only was she pleasing to watch– you couldn’t keep your eyes of her.

Worden’s decision to record an album exclusively with an orchestral ensemble comes as no surprise, as she’s always incorporated strings into her compositions. In fact, the swells of violins cascading upwards against her guttural growls or wails often provided an excellent harmonic synchrony that made Worden’s music wildly compelling. But, the decision to ditch the electric guitar does come as a surprise, since it also is inextricably tied with Worden’s musical aesthetic. Even so, her full embrace of removing the instrument that has been essential to her sound is both invigorating and intriguing, not because it changes the game, but because it’s done with such success.

Glide Magazine’s Peter Zimmerman had the pleasure of speaking with Shara Worden as the wheels behind the gradual unveiling of All Things Will Unwind started to turn. Among many other things, they spoke about the history of the collaboration with yMusic ensemble, her approach to songwriting and rhythmic construction, plans to tour this record and why she loves the musical Annie.

Earlier in 2011, you performed with the yMusic ensemble for a show at Lincoln Center, and I know you wrote some of this album for that performance. How did that collaboration begin?

yMusic is this supergroup made by Rob Moose (who works with My Brightest Diamond) and the trumpet player CJ Camerieri, and they decided to create this mixed ensemble of strings and woodwinds. They approached me, and several other artists, to write instrumental pieces for them, and in doing so they bought me a computer program called Sibelius (music composition/notation software). I had hand-written all of the arrangements for the first two My Brightest Diamond records, and it was so excruciating. I thought I was really hardcore by using my calligraphy pen and everything, but it was so tedious and took so long to work through that stuff that I decided that I was finished writing out the arrangements. They bought me this program, though, so I chose to seize the opportunity to write for them. They’re some of the most amazing musicians I have ever heard, and I thought I’d be missing out if I didn’t take advantage of their desire to work with me.

Then there was the American Songbook show at the Lincoln Center’s Allen Room. I knew I wanted to do some old work and then present new pieces for them. I had two months to prepare, so I had to write a song each day to stay on schedule with what I wanted to do, which was thirty minutes of new music. So, I’d write a song every day, and then arrange them, which took about two days each. Then, I’d go to New York and have a rehearsal, drive home to Detroit for another three weeks of arranging and writing, and then drive back to New York– just back and forth. After a few rehearsals over nine weeks, we had to be ready for that concert. That was what the process looked like.

You set out three rules for this collaboration: every sound would be created acoustically, you’d play as infrequently as possible and if you did play, the instrument must fit in a suitcase. What compelled you to come up with those parameters?

I had learned from the last two records that as soon as I introduced the electric guitar into a chamber ensemble it created a whole new and different set of complications. Also, if you put an electric guitar in my hands, I just want to play it loudly (laughs)– I am going to turn on the distortion pedal at some point. I thought, “OK. I have these world class musicians. Let me try to use the instruments as the foundations for the songs.” Also, I wondered how I could really get into my brain, since imagination is our greatest tool. The more I could get to my imagination and away from my fingers, I felt that it would just open more possibilities for me.

And the suitcase thing is mostly a practical consideration. It’s difficult to tour when you’re playing a different instrument on every song. I think because I’m not a real instrumentalist, I use timbre to help me in songwriting. If I hear a sound, I get excited about a certain tone or sound, and then I want to write a song for that particular sound. Once I do that, I’m done with that piece. That means I’ve just been using a different instrument for each song on previous tours, and that is a very tough thing to pull off, from a practical touring side of things.

After you released A Thousand Shark’s Teeth (2008), were you having difficulty entering back into an aesthetic writing mindset, so by breaking down your traditional approach to songwriting you could recreate it in a new way? Or was this new album specifically tied to that one Lincoln Center show? What’s your writing process been over the last three years?

I have been planning for years to write something completely different, so it really did have to do with the fact that this seemed like a zeitgeist– a particular moment in time, that if I didn’t catch it then it would be gone. In the beginning, there was a bit of confusion as to whether this would be the first Shara Worden album, or whether this would still be My Brightest Diamond. The deeper we got into the process, we realized that these songs are in the same vocabulary. I think they’re still in the same language.

I take my cues from people who have made lots and lots of records. I think the records are definitely by the timbre, and so I really am trying to follow that. I don’t want to repeat myself. Obviously, you have a certain way of doing things and coming up with an end result. But I try to look at those artists who have had long careers and learn from that.

When you started My Brightest Diamond, you mentioned that seeing Antony and the Johnsons and Nina Nastasia had a major influence on your desire to work with strings and incorporate them into the indie rock paradigm. Is this the culmination of that exploration?

I think it’s really just one end of the pendulum. There’s this tension in my personality– a punk/rebelliousness, where I want to mess up something that’s a little too pretty. But then I want to make something really pretty– something warm, lush and beautiful. I guess that’s why I have a relationship with the guitar (laughs). I see that experimentation between those sides going on for a long time.

Have you already started working on the next My Brightest Diamond record– outside of the yMusic work?

Well, this record really just started in November (2010), and other than that I’ve done very little writing over the last three years. There have been so many different collaborations– I’m a hustler! (laughs) I’ve been working nonstop and really hard, but not on writing necessarily. You have to go into an almost subconscious place to write, and it can’t be administrative, wondering where you’re going and how you’re getting there. You have to go to a different place. It’s a totally different muscle group. I really have to set aside time for that, and so no, I haven’t yet started work on the next record. But, I am definitely formulating ideas about where I’m going next, and what the new set of challenges– things I want to explore– will be.

What were some of your influences with All Things Will Unwind? Were there albums or musicians that inspired you during the process?

I didn’t really listen to much orchestral stuff– well, some. I really love Robert Flack, and I would listen to “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” over and over and just absorb that song. For drums, I was listening to a lot of Violent Femmes, because they have that folk/punk drum beat, but he uses brushes on the drums, which made me think that’d be a great way where you can still get attitude and force out of the instrument without being really loud.

Tom Waits is always a huge influence. His songwriting, definitely, but he’s also a timbre king. His lyrics are so amazing. He uses a vast amount of sources– he pulls from so many influences– but when you hear his music, it absolutely sounds like him. But, he has so many different kinds of songs, so I wanted to use him as a guide.

I listened to Annie the Musical, especially “It’s a Hard Knock Life”– that’s a great song! (laughs) Otis Redding, too. It was a lot of particular songs, really. There would just be songs that would pop into my head, making me think if I could make work for this record that were architecturally like that. Oh, and Sade, for sure. She’s amazing.

Even though you’ve worked with the traditional rock setup, with guitar/drums/bass, on the last two My Brightest Diamond albums, I find All Things Will Unwind to be the most rhythmically vibrant thing you’ve done, because you’re constantly engaging a push-pull dynamic with your voice and the other instruments. Polar forces seem to be a foundation for much of this record, as you sing the “agreeable disagreeables” on the title track. What inspired that?

Well, it’s interesting you’re picking up on that, because there was a certain part of that that was conscious and a certain part that wasn’t. We definitely made conscious choices about when rhythm was going to be straight and when it would be swung– when we’re playing behind the beat and when we’re on top of it. That was very much a conversation with the group as we recorded the album.

The ideology of working with polar forces started with President Obama’s “shellacking” speech in November– right when all the Republicans won in office, and that’s when I was first starting this project. He ended that speech by saying we need to learn how to disagree without being disagreeable, and after I heard that I ran up to my room and wrote “We Added It Up.” It’s about trying to understand this polarity, and there’s this polarity in our world right now on so many levels– not just politically. Then, I tried to pull back from that and look at the fundamentals of polarity. In our atom, we have protons and neutrons, and then I found about the neutrino, which is a neutral character.

In some way, I feel that conflict within myself, that with the internet and technology we have the awareness of everything that’s happening. We know North Koreans are starving, we know that the Chinese have people under house arrest that are winning Nobel prizes, we know that the sun is dying and that there’s more sex slavery, and really slavery, in the world now than we’ve ever known about. Because of technology we have all of this knowledge about what’s happening on a global level, and it’s extremely disturbing. Because, what do we do about all these situations– all these different realities for people?

I had a son a year ago, and just to have a child and see this beautiful human being and have these precious, gorgeous moments where he’s just the most joyful creature, that matched with me living in Detroit, which is like such an intense place to be because of the poverty and racism. So, for me it’s a culmination of all of these things and me trying to figure out how to process this time in history– how do we seize the moments of life that we have, and what is our responsibility in this time. There is just a lot of weight to deal with.

Because this record is so personal for you, and because it also grapples with these major issues that maybe you haven’t worked with as intently on previous albums, how do you feel about this project? Are there things you would like to go back and change?

You know what– I’m super proud of this record. On the past record, I was in so much personal pain from a death in my family. It was so traumatic, and there was a lot of hiding that I needed to do, and I think because I’m through that personal pain I can be more open. It’s such a relief to me. I think being a mother completely changes your perspective on things.

How do you plan to tour this album? The fact that you worked with yMusic ensemble exclusively I assume will make it difficult to coordinate a major outing.

It has been a crazy past few weeks. In July, I played with yMusic, and then recently we opened for Sufjan in Brooklyn, with drums, bass and electronics, so we did it as a four piece. Then last night I did it with an orchestra, and then tonight I’m playing it solo. I think it’s going to be less of a “different city every day” sort of tour, where it’s more one off performances, which in a way almost makes them more significant, because at this point I’m not able to hop in the bus and take ten people around with me. There’s some more collaborations I’m working on in the next few months, so we’ll see how it develops. I would like to take it around, though– like Bon Iver’s new band! (laughs) I’ve really foiled myself though. I have all the best intentions of being practical, and then I go and do a fully orchestral piece. Why did I do it to myself again?! But hopefully we’ll see you as we’re trying to do a West Coast sort of tour in the beginning of November. But who knows… maybe I’ll just say screw convention and hop in the bus.

All Things Will Unwind is released on October 18, 2011 through Asthmatic Kitty Records. More information on My Brightest Diamond, including tour updates and preorder details, can be found at www.mybrightestdiamond.com. Alternatively, follow Shara on Twitter or Facebook.