Digital Single available via iTunes.
Release Date: September 20, 2011

1. Be Brave [Album version]
2. Be Brave [Prefuse73 remix]
3. Be Brave [Alternate version, feat. Son Lux]

US release date: October 18, 2011
International release date: October 10, 2011
Photo by Denny Renshaw
Hairsculpture by Hrafnhildur Arnardóttir aka Shoplifter
Art by David Stith

All Things Will Unwind is the third, stunning offer from Detroit based experimental pop chanteuse-My Brightest Diamond, aka Shara Worden. Known for her many colloborations with indie rock royalty as well as her extraordinary original material, Worden is coming into her own as an artist and human on this 11 song recording. At once accessible and intelligent, the songs were written exclusively for celebrated chamber ensemble yMusic, and they are featured on each track.

“We Added it Up” opens the record with a punchy, almost Ragtime acoustic guitar, suggesting Cabaret by way of Carolina. Worden’s voice, ever mesmerizing, dances between the notes in a clever narrative of love’s opposites, then joins a rousing call and response chorus on the song’s finale. The range of influences on All Things Will Unwind are as eclectic as its’ author, but listeners will recognize hints of Roberta Flack, Regina Specktor, Edith Piaf and Antony & The Johnsons throughout the album. Inspired by becoming a mother, chats with legendary performance artist Laurie Anderson, presidential addresses, and class warfare, Worden is metabolizing her influences as only she can- with playful, profound originality.

Since recording My Brightest Diamond’s critically acclaimed sophomore album A Thousand Shark’s Teeth, Shara has returned to Detroit, where she grew up in a family of musical evangelists. She is drawing inspiration from the motor city’s unique struggles. On “High Low Middle” Worden takes us to the center of Detroit’s unemployment crisis, in a catchy, vaudevillian protest song that would make Woodie Guthrie proud:

Righteous heathen

Blinded and seein

You’re next you’re before

You’re pompous you are poor

Your hungry yet strangely your working like crazy

All Things Will Unwind is a picture of an artist maturing; considering joy and pain, beauty and horror, yet bravely standing in the tension between the two- and singing about it. The record closes with “I Have Never Loved Someone” and finds Shara dipping into her soothing alto, singing to her newborn son; the pedals of the pump organ creak under the vocal, evoking visions of a cradle gently rocking:

I have never loved someone the way I love you

I have never seen a smile like yours

And if you grow up to be king or clown or pauper,

I will say you are my favorite one in town

Yet even in a lullaby, one that could easily be a classic, Shara is still Shara:

And when I grow to be a poppy in the graveyard

I will send you all my love upon the breeze

And if the breeze won’t blow your way

…I will find some other way to tell you, you’re ok

She closes the album repeating you’re ok, against the swell of an angelic choir, assuring her son, herself, and the listener- in this world of opposites “ok” – like this remarkable album-is a well-earned triumph.

1. We Added it Up – 4:05
2. Reaching Through to the Other Side – 3:42
3. In The Beginning – 4:20
4. Escape Routes – 3:28
5. Be Brave – 4:17
6. She Does Not Brave the War – 4:05
7. Ding Dang – 2:31
8. There’s a Rat – 4:09
9. High Low Middle – 3:34
10. Everything is in Line – 4:32
11. I Have Never Loved Someone – 3:39

Release date: March 29, 2011
Photos by Murat Eyuboglu
Poetry by Mustafa Ziyalan

Available at New Amsterdam | iTunes | Amazon

Letters to Distant Cities is a collaborative work that brings together poetry,music, photography and design. The origin of the project lies with the poetry of Mustafa Ziyalan, which explores themes of urban solitude in all of its melancholy and enchanted dimensions. The female persona of the poems traverses topographies that are dream-like and all-too-real. Shara Worden’s reading of the text makes the experiences captured in these poems shimmer with a fantastical glow. Instrumental music composed and performed by Rob Moose weaves through the poems and subtly makes manifest a range of moods latent in the poems and in the grain of Worden’s voice. The album is bookended by two original songs: My Brightest Diamond’s myth-like The Sea opens the album and Clare and the Reasons’ ethereally wistful Invisible acts as its bittersweet conclusion.

In addition to the recording, a set of 24 cards featuring photographs along with the poems are included in the package. Captured by photographer Murat Eyuboglu and featuring Jamie Ansley, the images provide another level of reflection on the experiences of the poetic persona. The design of Adam Frint brings together the music, poetry, recitation, and photography into a gorgeous and thoughtfully-produced package.

Art by David Stith

The music of My Brightest Diamond lends itself well to remixes. Shara Worden’s exquisite voice provides the perfect lead (or backing track) for any sort of deconstructing or restructuring of her original music. My Brightest Diamond’s debut Bring Me the Workhorse (2006) was given the remix treatment in the form of a remix compilation entitled Tear It Down (2007). This collection is evidence to the strength of her compositions and voice, as remixed by such artists as Murcof, Alias, Lusine, Golden Chains among others. While Asthmatic Kitty and My Brightest Diamond had no regrets about the Tear It Down project, when the time came to talk remixes for A Thousand Shark’s Teeth, they both realized a need for a more cohesive and conceptual project. They brought on four remixers (Alfred Brown, DM Stith, Son Lux and Roberto Carlos Lange (Epstein, Savath and Savalas, ROM) and commissioned them to each create a separate EP of remixed material. The third of these EPs is by Roberto C. Lange.

The son of Ecuadorean immigrants, Roberto Carlos Lange was born in South Florida in 1980. Lange’s childhood was suffused with tropical heat, humidity and hurricanes all of which refracted the rich colors and sounds of the various Latin cultures establishing roots at that time throughout much of southern Florida. Pounding bass beats from passing cars, boom boxes bouncing down the block and late-night parties at home called “peñas” provided a deep foundation for Lange’s interest in sound and a lifelong thirst for discovering the unlimited variety of objects used to produce music. Today, Lange’s musical compositions are adjusted and aligned with the moment in which they exist; they are often constructed through improvised performances and accidental happenings. Over the last four years Lange has collaborated with prominent visual and sound artist, David Ellis, to compose a new series of kinetic sound sculptures. Currently, Lange is working with famed music producer Guillermo Scott Herren on a solo project called “Prefuse 73″ and has joined Savath and Savalas as an active member and contributor.

“A lot of times deep concepts, meanings and definitions of why things are made become the extra baggage that is irrelevant to whats in front of you,” Roberto answers when asked to describe his remixes. “The sound coming from these remixes are reactions to the source it came from. Shara’s voice and her song writing lead me to a quiet and calm place. everything that came from that place was like painting by numbers but the numbers kept changing. It its a delicate place to walk when you’re contributing and manipulating someone’s way of communicating.” It is through these experiences that Roberto has filtered the voice and music of My Brightest Diamond to create what sounds like a transmission from warm weather dreams, peaceful and floating but rooted in a tradition of Latin percussion, and unrooted by cosmic automation and outerspace sensibility.

1. Manzanas
2. Queen
3. Estar Pluto
4. The Zircon Prince Edit
5. Brightest Outro

Art by David Stith

Son Lux is Ryan Lott. He lived for six years in Cleveland, Ohio and earned a reputation as a versatile and zealous collaborator. Equally at ease in the creative company of choreographers, classical musicians, and break dancers, Lott cut his teeth spear-heading multi-disciplinary “performance parties,” composing music for dance companies throughout the US, and collaborating with bands across many genres. In the cracks of time and energy between all his collaborations, “Son Lux” was born out of an urge to finally set about making an album. It began as an experiment and a personal creative challenge. What Lott, as Son Lux, wove together over 4 years in his attic studio is the album many critics are calling one of the best records of 2008. At War With Walls and Mazes is an impressive debut which earned Son Lux the title of Best New Artist by NPR’s All Songs Considered as well as rave reviews from ARTFORUM, Pitchfork, Paste and XLR8R.

After Asthmatic Kitty asked Lott to remix Thousand Shark’s Teeth, the second full-length from My Brightest Diamond, Son Lux restrained himself from hearing any of the songs he remixed until after he was completely finished working, keeping with his custom. “This enables me to glimpse the soul of the song in its parts, rather than its whole,” Son Lux says. He then takes the pieces of bone and tissue from the session files and mends them together to create a new thing, stitching in his own pieces and parts, unbiased by an “end result” or preconceived form. The outcome is indeed a collection of new lifeforms, whose souls have withstood Son Lux’s process, reincarnated into new living things.

Fortunately for Son Lux, his specimens had good karma. This graceful Dr. Frankenstein approach to the My Brightest Diamond material has created four very distinct remixes, ranging from the old-school electro mashed with New Orleans horn funk treatment of “Apples,” elegiac ambient strings overtop minimalist post-rock drumming on “The Diamond,” break driven cutup rocker of the anthem “Inside A Boy,” to the lowrider chamber piano chopped “To Pluto’s Moon.” The adventurous stylistic range of each remix is a reflection of the EP as a whole; it is at once many things with Shara Worden’s original vocals as the cords holding them all in perfect tension.

1. Apples
2. The Diamond
3. Inside A Boy
4. To Pluto’s Moon

Art by David Stith

My Brightest Diamond’s debut Bring Me the Workhorse (2006) was given the remix treatment in the form of a remix compilation entitled Tear It Down (2007).  This collection is evidence to the strength of her compositions and voice, as remixed by such artists as Murcof, Alias, Lusine, Golden Chains among others.  While Asthmatic Kitty and My Brightest Diamond had no regrets about the Tear It Down project, when the time came to talk remixes for A Thousand Shark’s Teeth, they both realized a need for a more cohesive and conceptual project. They brought on three remixers (Alfred Brown, DM Stith, and Son Lux) and commisioned them to each create a separate EP of remixed material. The first of these EPs is by Alfred Brown.

Alfred Brown loves little sounds. He is easily sidetracked for ten or fifteen minutes tapping on a desktop, listening to the tonal qualities.  Raised in the small town Hoosick Falls, NY surrounded by farms, Alfred Brown started playing saxophone in 5th grade and played in the school band up until 11th grade.  From playing the national anthem with the community band in the town’s park gazeebo, to channeling his early teen angst via the guitar mostly punk music and lisa loeb, Alfred Brown finally decided to pursue music and composition.  He began to find resonance with composers such as Anton Webern, Edgar Varez, John Cage, and Pierre Boulez.  These composers and his study of composition changed the way he heard music. Music became organized sound.  It was around this time that Brown began recording unperformable recordings, which started as importing any soundclip that happened to be on the computer and deconstructing it through computer editing software into an unrecognizable form.

“To me this piece is about dichotomies; about the relationship between what is outside of us and what is inside of us; about the deep calling to the deep…It is about fear and wonder.” – Alfred Brown

Drawing inspiration from My Brightest Diamond’s many references to the heavens, Alfred Brown developed a narrative to guide the composition process of his remixes.  The stunning result is a cinematic and textural avant-classical deconstruction of the My Brightest Diamond’s A Thousand Shark’s Teeth. Instead of a straight ahead approach to remixing a single song, Alfred combined parts from different songs, juxtaposing new elements to give the preexisting material new meaning.  The guiding narrative is about an astronaut stranded outside of his ship while working in Low Earth Orbit.  As he descends toward earth he is completely cut off from all communication with Earth and finds himself totally alone.  During this time of complete isolation he thinks about his loved ones back on Earth, about his life, about God, and about dying.  The remixes narrate, through words and music, these contemplations being sent out across the universe; and the echoes that come back.

I.

1. Overture

2. A Thousand Stars Against a Dark Sky

3. In Vacuum

4. black!Black!BLACK!

II.

5. Of Fear and Wonder (I Found a Universe)

6. I’m Never Letting Go (Stars at Elbow and Foot)

7. The Lonliest Man In History (Looking Down from the Top of the World)

8. You Are Now Untouchable (Esto Perpetue)

While Shara Worden of My Brightest Diamond retains a French vocabulary more comparable to that of an African Grey Parrot than to Victor Hugo, she does love to sing French songs from the 1930s. Borrowed melodies from Worden’s favorite French sparrow, the inimitable Edith Piaf, “Adieu mon Coeur,” and “Hymne A L’Amour” have become standard concert repertoire for My Brightest Diamond in recent years.

After having fled Germany to escape the Nazi’s in 1933, composer Kurt Weill penned the music for “Youkali:Tango Habenera”. Years later, Roger Fernay added lyrics describing a vagabond trip to an island of bliss called Youkali, whereupon landing a fairy would act as one’s personal tour guide. Youkali is a land of happiness and fulfilled desire, a place where all the stars shine brighter. But the dreamy mists dissipate in the second verse, as life progresses only tediously while poor human souls seek to escape to the mysterious utopia in vain.

With the help of co-producer / ear candy man Zac Rae, a longstanding Diamond collaborator, these recordings take new flight with his host of reversed pianos, paint can snares, and warbling theramins.

1. From the Top of the World
2. Youkali: Tango Habanera
3. Hymne Á L’Amour
4. Adieu Mon Coeur

Listen to an exclusive acoustic version of “Adieu mon Coeur”, then download for freeee while you read an interview with Shara on Stereogum.

Available at Asthmatic Kitty | iTunes | Amazon

Charming, playful, daring, foreboding, graceful, eclectic, exciting and visceral: these are all the first words that come to mind after a full listen through A Thousand Shark’s Teeth. It is a record that evokes and challenges, full of the sorts of melodies and arrangements that stay with you long after the album’s stopped playing. Combining songs that were written both before and after the release of Bring Me the Workhorse, and produced and arranged by Shara herself, A Thousand Shark’s Teeth reflects different times, feelings, musical genres and facets of one’s personality, all perfectly sewn together by the powerful thread that is Shara’s dynamic voice.

Originally meant to be a more classical, string quartet affair, A Thousand Shark’s Teeth slowly evolved and refined itself over a period of six years. The record, which was mixed by Husky Höskulds (Tom Waits, Elvis Costello), was recorded in Berlin, Los Angeles and New York City, and features twenty different players all contributing little bits of musical magic. Influenced by artists such as Tricky, French composer Maurice Ravel and Tom Waits, in addition to the star exploration themes of Anslem Kiefer‘s paintings, the imaginary landscapes of photographer Robert ParkeHarrison, films by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, and Alice in Wonderland, A Thousand Shark’s Teeth is a musical snowglobe that sparkles each time you touch it. The songs, whose themes broach intimacy, kisses by moonlight, laundry, lost friendship and more, marry vast instrumentation – marimbas, harps, clarinets, French horns, rabid guitars, vibraphones to name a few – to create an unequaled amalgamation of style and color. In simple terms: it’s beautiful, and there’s nothing else quite like it.

Opener and first single “Inside A Boy” is classic Diamond – slippery guitars meet with gorgeous strings and Shara’s powerhouse voice, which folds nicely into “Ice and the Storm,” a driving foot-stomp of a tune full of swirling vocals, metallic crackles and a stuttering beat. “Black and Costaud” borrows lyrics from a Ravel opera and sees Diamond full of dramatic flourish, while “From the Top of the World” vibrates with soulful swagger, showing off Shara’s tremendous guitar playing. “Apples” is Diamond at her most coy, her vocal line delivered with quite a flirtatious smile, “Like a Sieve” twists a Tricky sample upside down, and “Goodbye Forever” swells with a string-heavy chorus as Shara sings of things lost in a fire, literally and figuratively, exploring both beauty and danger in a shark’s kiss.

The tracklisting:

1. Inside A Boy
2. Ice and the Storm
3. If I Were Queen
4. Apples
5. From the Top of the World
6. Black and Costaud
7. To Pluto’s Moon
8. Bass Player
9. Goodbye Forever
10. Like a Sieve
11. The Diamond

Lyrics:

INSIDE A BOY

inside a boy i found a universe
and in his eyes are a thousand stars on a dark sky
we are clouds we are whispers like fauns and shapeshifters
our edges can never be found out
our edges keep moving further out

we are stars colliding
now we crash like lightening into love

in his arms im unwinding
under his kiss i am falling into love

we are stars colliding
now we crash like lightening into love

THE ICE AND THE STORM

open up your heart to me
darling you’re resisting this bliss
you’ve been dreaming only of it

it’s just like ice building up inside
darling we’ve accumulated too much miscommunication
in a beginning everything is soft not defensive
perhaps we begin again shyly
i wanna love you loosely
so nothing is stopping me from receiving from giving out

i want a storm to blow it out
i want to shake myself and turn my heart inside out

open up your heart to me now
darling you’re resisting this bliss
you’ve been dreaming only of it

i want a storm to blow it out
i want to shake myself and turn my heart inside out

don’t you want to let it go

IF I WERE QUEEN

if i were queen then you and i’d be neighbors
i’d pick you up each morning for doughnuts and tea
ah close by
ah close by

if i were queen then you and i’d be neighbors
we’d collect things and we could argue where to put them
ah close by
ah close by

APPLES

sometimes in the springtime
i like to see the apple blossoms with you
sometimes in the winter
i like to see the snow falling with you

once we took apples from my grandfather’s tree
but i had nowhere to plant the seed
so we baked them with sugar and we ate them

sometimes on saturdays when it’s raining we do laundry
especially then i like to watch you fold so carefully the clothes
especially then i like to watch you move your fingers slow

FROM THE TOP OF THE WORLD

at the end of the sea there waits my wind to carry me
through storms we will sail just to gaze at the top of the world

from the bottom of the world we looked up and saw the moon
and gazing at it then we fell in love

so we made up our minds to arrive smiling yes
we made up our minds to touch the height of life
and find out what we felt for it
how we felt for it

from the top of the world we looked up and saw the sun
and gazing at it then we fell in love

BLACK AND COSTAUD

black and costaud black and chic
jolly fellow jolly fellow black
i punch sir
i boxe you

black and costaud black and chic black black black
black and thick and vrai beau gosse
i punch your nose
i knock you out you stupid chose
i punch your nose
i marm’lad you you stupid chose stupid chose

avec ma voix je marm’lad toi
je marm’lad toi

oh black and costaud
oh i punch your nose
oh black and costaud
oh stupid chose

TO PLUTO’S MOON

how i tried to catch you while you ran ahead of me
i lassoed mars to see if you were hiding there
but you’d already ran past jupiter to pluto’s moon
and my rope won’t reach that moon

this is a state of electrical shock
you were so beautiful i thought you’d last forever
but you came and you went when the lights went out
you went like you came
in a light’ning bolt

why did you go like this
i slam against the wall
it’s crushing my skull
why did you go like this
i slam against the wall of permanence

and like a ghost i am spinning
in circles the dance of pluto’s moon

BASS PLAYER

bass player all alone
makes a sound most wouldn’t call a symphony
as he plays thinks of maid sad and shuffling

she sings blow me a kiss before i drown in sorrow
blow me a kiss before i drown

he saw her by the moon
dress in hand her hips were swayin’
melancholy tune broken buckles tired lips

she was singing
blow me a kiss before i drown in sorrow
blow me a kiss before i drown in laundry

she said i want to be with the stars tonight so i can fly above the laundry

GOODBYE FOREVER

oh to lose by fire by flame this old feeling
insignificance

then i can hear you brighter than the stars
your voice is a razor blade
i can see you shining through the sun
you’re so mysterious

lose the hold as i throw this with a goodbye forever
fear of exposure

then i can hear you brighter than the stars
your touch is light’ning
i can feel you prickling like a thousand shark teeth
prickling like a thousand shark teeth closer to me

come closer to me
come closer to me
come closer to me
come closer to me still

LIKE A SIEVE

i rest my head on water
i slip under

i descend into the deep
past the rushes, past the shipwrecks
into my tears i float

and like a sieve i’m catching leaves and sticks
i’m catching planks and fishes
so it washes through me clean
i’m run clean through
ah!

THE DIAMOND

you are the brightest diamond
i can see you shining for miles and miles and miles and miles
everybody here’s wearing long faces but you

and mary wants to hold your face and kiss you for her birthday
are you coming?
i can see you shining
i can see you shining

you are the brightest diamond hidden in my pocket
oh how glorious you must feel splendid
you must feel splendid

but you have spit out beauty like an idiot
why did you chew up shinies with a paper shredder

you are the brightest diamond hidden on my wrist
you are now untouchable
now untouchable
now untouchable

reaching through the space between your universe and mine a warm light shines
and will until all breath and sigh expend

expend

expend

1. Apples (alternate version)
2. Bass Player (alternate version)
3. To Pluto’s Moon (alternate version)
4. If I Were Queen (alternate version)
5. The Diamond (alternate version)
6. Music Box (outtake)