First Listen: My Brightest Diamond, 'This Is My Hand' — npr.org

My Brightest Diamond's new album, This Is My Hand, comes out Sept. 16. Bernd Preiml/Courtesy of the artist hide caption My Brightest Diamond's new album, This Is My Hand, comes out Sept. 16. Shara Worden is the kind of artist whose work would be described, were it created on a canvas or mounted as an installation, as "mixed media." It's a tantalizing and maddening phrase in curation — one that implies many forces at play, but leaves the task of decanting each one to the viewer. As a musician, Worden (who performs as My Brightest Diamond) builds her songs deliberately and impeccably, using many moving parts culled from influences across the art world. Elements of opera, cabaret, chamber pop, and art pop all recur, and on This Is My Hand, Worden adds a drumline ("Pressure") and industrial noise ("I Am Not The Bad Guy") to her repertoire, giving sharper corners to the round warmth of her operatically trained voice. This Is My Hand finds her wielding instruments like a series of tools, each with a discrete purpose in the construction of an abstract, heterogeneous galaxy.

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